CobianSoft

I am trying to exclude any directory that ends in ".lrdata" and any subdirectories and files in its subordinates.

A snippet from my Log file.

2023-03-12 Adding the directory "\\Qnap-ef217\photo\LightRoom\LightRoomCatalogs\A_Catalog\J_Catalog Previews.lrdata\0\00D7" to the archive...
2023-03-12 Adding the directory "\\Qnap-ef217\photo\LightRoom\LightRoomCatalogs\A_Catalog\J_Catalog Previews.lrdata\0\01D4" to the archive...
2023-03-12 Adding the directory "\\Qnap-ef217\photo\LightRoom\LightRoomCatalogs\A_Catalog\J_Catalog Previews.lrdata\0\0258" to the archive...

I tried this: Filter-->Exclude Files
.*\\\.lrdata\\.*
and also this one: .*\\\*.lrdata\\.*

With no luck (or proficiency with regular expressions).

The excluded directories contain files matching *.lrprev. I also tried excluding these files with various (regular expression) *.lrprev and .*\\\*.lrprev which also didn't work. Given thousands of lrprev files in the subdirectories, it is more effecient to just exclude the directories.

Am I missing something obvious?

Try .*\\\*.lrdata\\.* as a regular expression.

Still not working;

Exclude From .LST file
FOFilterKind=4
FOMask=.*\\\*.lrdata\\.*
FOSize=0

Side note: The exclude list also has (2) directories ( e.g. \\qnap-ef217\photo\@recycle) listed, but when I search the .lst file for these directories, they are not there (but still show in the backup job details).

From LOG File
2023-03-15 12:31:54 The file "D:\TEMP\c655d42f-f970-4516-b882-f3e8010290ac\Herzog_Junk_Catalog.7z.001" has been successfully copied to "\\Qnap-ef217\backup\Archive-Reflector\Qnap-ef217\photo\LightRoom\LightRoomCatalogs\Herzog_Junk_Catalog\Herzog_Junk_Catalog.7z 2023-Mar-15 12;31;47 (Full).001".
2023-03-15 12:31:54 The temporary directory "D:\TEMP\c655d42f-f970-4516-b882-f3e8010290ac" has been successfully deleted.
2023-03-15 12:31:54 ** Backup for the task "TEST QNAP \\Photo-LightRoom" has ended **
2023-03-15 12:31:54 ** Processed files: 315. Backed up files: 315. Created folders: 0. Backup size: 29.56 MB. **
2023-03-15 12:31:54 ** Number of errors: 0. Time elapsed: 0 hours, 0 minutes, 6 seconds. **

Looking at the .7z, then the number for files should be zero(or nearly so) Multiple directories under .lrdata that should be empty (i.e. not backed up)
The files I am trying to exclude are all cache files (GB's worth). I also tried to get it to exclude all the cache files (*.lrprev) and was unsuccessful at that too. Am I asking the backup to do something that it was not designed to do?

Hmm... need to check that. The directories should be created but empty.

Let me know if you need test data.
Also, this structure is on a QNAP NAS device, so could this be NAS related? I will try a test on my local drive.

Don't think is NAS related. I will do some tests tomorrow.

I did a test on my local hard drive and it still fails, so the NAS is not the issue. I can zip up part of the directory structure and dropbox it if you need test data or will be happy to install a test version.

Have you tried the Regex expression :

.*\\.*\.lrdata\\.*

the content of the .lrdata folder will be excluded, but the .lrdata will remain in the backup, empty

If you want it to be removed also and you do'nt want to check the option (delete empty folders) try this expression

.*\\(?:.*\.lrdata\\.*)|(?:.*\.lrdata$)

Sorry, wrong topic.