restricting backup of media player files

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vimarmot - 07 May 2008 17:18 GMT

I am doing nightly backups of my PC and am finding that the "incremental"
backups are backing up MP3 files that I have played that day. I suppose that
by playing the file the archive bit is being reset.

I wonder if anybody has a method of avoiding backing up these files. I am
currently using the built in backup with Vista, but have used other backup
packages with the same result. My backup drive is very large, but I would
really like to avoid this wasted system usage and storage.

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Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media] - 07 May 2008 19:19 GMT

>I am doing nightly backups of my PC and am finding that the "incremental"
>backups are backing up MP3 files that I have played that day. I suppose that
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>packages with the same result. My backup drive is very large, but I would
>really like to avoid this wasted system usage and storage.

It's likely all your MP3 files are in the /Documents/My Music folder.
It's also likely that's a designated / default user backup folder.

If you shift-click, then drag the folder contents elsewhere, windows
explorer is supposed to notify WMP that the contents were moved
(rather than if you used Cut+Paste or Copy)

So WMP should pick up the new file location - else press F3 then
Advanced to scan the new location for media files.

Once that's done, it should be possible to exclude the file location
from backup, reducing your backup to typicall only a few hundred files

HTH
Cheers - Neil
------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2008
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs

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vimarmot - 07 May 2008 22:28 GMT

> >I am doing nightly backups of my PC and am finding that the "incremental"
> >backups are backing up MP3 files that I have played that day. I suppose that
[quoted text clipped - 23 lines]
> Digital Media MVP : 2004-2008
> http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs

Appreciate the response but I don't want to stop the backing up of files. I
want to only back up the files that changed and media player seems to be
setting the archiving bit to on. I have two PC's; one has all my MP3's on a
shared drive (files are just in a MP3_directory and not part of any
profiles). I have my other system connected to a whole house audio system.
This PC is where I play the MP3's (I connect to the share and then open Media
Player, which shows all my songs).

I suppose I could write a program to set the archive bit off prior to
backup, but I was hoping to find a Media Player solution.

When I open a Word doc and close it without changing it, the archive bit is
not set. Why would an MP3 be any different?

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Mac Forum / Applications / Media Player / May 2008

restricting backup of media player files