Time Machine Kicks in?

Everytime I launch an XP virtual machine, Time machine starts up for some reason or other. Does anyone else have this problem? This slows down everything until TM is finished.

Note - latest version of Parallels; 10.5.3 osx; VM area disabled from TM backups.

 

This is just the way time machine works.

Whenever a file has changed at all time machine makes a backup of it. Your VM's hard disk is stored as one single (very large) file. Whenever the VM is running it changes the state of it's disk, so time machine makes another backup of it.

My time machine backs up 20GB every hour.

You can set TM to not back up the VM's hard disk (called a .hdd file) but then it is not backing up your VM.

 

Just one warning about Time Machine
The main problem with Time Machine is that by default it takes snapshots every hour.
There are third party plugins which allows to change this behavior to once a day.
What is the problem.
Let say Time Machine is backing up Parallels Desktop
and example file order is
Snapshot.xml
VirtualMachine.pvs
--etc
winxp.hdd

There is some seconds between Snapshot.xml or DiskDescriptor.xml has been backed up, and to go to the winxp.hdd file and during those seconds you write some data to disk
After that you turn off your Mac, not waiting to the next hour data will be synchronized
And some how disk failed
If you restore you will not be able to start VM, as there is difference between data in Snapshot.xml and in real snapshot file, the same is correct for DiskDesciptor.xml file in winxp.hdd bundle

Microsoft Windows use Volume Shadow Copy for such situations, but Mac doesn't and this is the main problem we recommend to use our tools for backup purposes.

 

As i mentioned in my original post, I excluded VM from my backup in Time Machine, and yet it still kicks in.

And again its EVERY time I first start XP VM of the day, NOT just on a regular hour. EVERY time i start the VM!

I have NO idea why anyone would want to INCLUDE Parallels VM's in a backup every hour. Thats crazy and besides the point. The WHOLE VM XP Folder is excluded from backups.

 

You can simply check that VM area excluded by checking in Finder your Parallels Desktop VM location folder, and ....
/private/tmp - which you cannot exclude, from Time Machine backup by TM interface only
/private/tmp/xxxx (xxxx - are some numbers) is your Windows disk mount point

 

Parallels Desktop VM location folder is IGNORED from TM backup via TM system Preferences.

Aha!!...so you are saying these extra tmp files are being backed up regardless of TM interface excludes?

But, then why is it kicking in as soon as I launch Parallels for the first time of the day, regardless of the next TM backup hour scheduled time? Its still very strange!

 

Because Windows drive is mounting there