13.0

Table Of Contents
Any change to a virtual machine's virtual hard disk file results in the entire file being backed up.
When you have a 40GB virtual machine, having Time Machine back it up every hour can fill a hard
disk quickly.
n Exclude a Virtual Machine From Time Machine
To prevent problems with your virtual machines and to save space on your backup media,
you should not back up virtual machines with Time Machine.
n Use Shared and Mirrored Folders If You Back Up Your Mac With Time Machine
To use Time Machine to back up data and documents from your virtual machines, keep those
files on the Mac.
Exclude a Virtual Machine From Time Machine
To prevent problems with your virtual machines and to save space on your backup media, you
should not back up virtual machines with Time Machine.
If you do not exclude virtual machines from Time Machine backups, Time Machine can back up
a virtual machine while it is running. Restoring from this kind of backup would overwrite your
current virtual machines with versions that are incomplete and potentially damaged. For the
recommended method of backing up virtual machines, see
Copy a Virtual Machine to External
Media.
Procedure
1 Open the Mac's System Preferences and click Time Machine.
2 Click Options.
3 Click the add (+) button at the bottom of the Do not back up list.
4 Browse to your Documents folder on the Mac, select the Virtual Machines folder, and click
Exclude.
The Virtual Machine folder appears in the Do not back up list, and displays the total memory
used by all your virtual machines.
5 Click Done, and close the Time Machine window.
Use Shared and Mirrored Folders If You Back Up Your Mac With
Time Machine
To use Time Machine to back up data and documents from your virtual machines, keep those files
on the Mac.
When you use Shared Folders and Mirrored Folders in your virtual machines, you save your
documents and data as files on the host, not in the guests. This means that although you exclude
virtual machines from Time Machine backups, Time Machine can back up the files in the Shared
and Mirrored folders because they do not reside in the virtual machines. See Enable Shared
Folders or Mirrored Folders for a Virtual Machine
Using VMware Fusion
VMware, Inc. 117