Does SD evaluate all files, always?
 

Hi,

I have a question about SD's behaviour, when using a Copy Script which restricts a backup to a small subset of the source hard-drive. I have a backup which uses the following settings:

ignore /
copy Users
ignore Users/dave/Library
ignore Users/dave/Movies
ignore Users/dave/Music
copy Users/dave/Library/Mail
copy Users/dave/Library/Mail Downloads

My intention here is to limit this particular backup to everything under /Users, and exclude some folders under /Users, such as /Users/dave/Library, while including /Users/dave/Library/Mail (etc.)

When this backup runs (as a smart-update), it does what I expect, and the specifications above select only the folders and sub-folders I'm interested in, however... according to the output messages, SD evaluates every single file on my hard-drive, even though my settings are restricted to /Users... for example, about 20,000 files are copied to the target, but 600,000 files are evaluated.

This seems like a lot of unnecessary work for my hard-drive... is this how it should work, or am I misunderstanding something? Thanks...

We always walk the entire "tree", Dave -- even if you've limited to just Dave. It's not that hard on the drive, and it's easier to verify that the right thing happens (since scripts can be arbitrarily complex)...