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World of Warcraft Launcher - Time Machine bug
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Every time I run WoW (which is far to much), it triggers off a 15G Time Machine backup - since the 4.1.0 upgrade.
It’s not a Time Machine bug - it’s just doing what it’s been told to - backup up files whose datetime-stamp have changed since the last time. It’s my guess that the Launcher, when it’s checking on updates, is touching all the data files as it goes. Time Machine comes along and sees that they’ve appeared to have changed and says, “Oh goody - someone’s given me some work to do.”
Overnight (from midnight to about 8:30am) I didn’t run WoW. At about 8:35 I fired off th launcher without running the game itself. At 8:41 it spent about forty minutes backing up the following (from timedog): [where /P/A/G/WoW = Pouakai/Applications/Games/World of Warcraft]
177B-> 180B /P/A/G/WoW/WoW.mfil
3.0GB-> 3.0GB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/art.MPQ
1.3GB-> 1.3GB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/expansion1.MPQ
2.5GB-> 2.5GB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/expansion2.MPQ
632.3MB-> 632.3MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/expansion3.MPQ
1.3GB-> 1.3GB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/sound.MPQ
2.4GB-> 2.4GB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/world.MPQ
457.8MB-> 457.8MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/wow-update-13164.MPQ
8.6KB-> 8.6KB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/wow-update-13205.MPQ
317.9MB-> 317.9MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/wow-update-13287.MPQ
151.9MB-> 151.9MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/wow-update-13329.MPQ
141.2MB-> 141.2MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/wow-update-13596.MPQ
11.3KB-> 11.3KB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/wow-update-13623.MPQ
280.0MB-> 280.0MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/wow-update-base-13914.MPQ
38.5MB-> 38.5MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/Interface/Cinematics/Goblin_1280.avi
24.9MB-> 24.9MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/Interface/Cinematics/Goblin_800.avi
66.3MB-> 66.3MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/Interface/Cinematics/WOW_Intro_LK_1280.avi
42.7MB-> 42.7MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/Interface/Cinematics/WOW_Intro_LK_800.avi
98.7MB-> 98.7MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/Interface/Cinematics/WOW_Wrathgate_1280.avi
63.8MB-> 63.8MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/Interface/Cinematics/WOW_Wrathgate_800.avi
54.5MB-> 54.5MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/Interface/Cinematics/WoW3X_Intro_1280.avi
35.2MB-> 35.2MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/Interface/Cinematics/WoW3X_Intro_800.avi
37.3MB-> 37.3MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/Interface/Cinematics/Worgen_1280.avi
24.2MB-> 24.2MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/Interface/Cinematics/Worgen_800.avi
486.2MB-> 486.2MB [10] /P/A/G/WoW/Data/Interface/Cinematics/
2.7MB-> 2.7MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/enUS/expansion1-locale-enUS.MPQ
42.0MB-> 42.0MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/enUS/expansion1-speech-enUS.MPQ
10.3MB-> 10.3MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/enUS/expansion2-locale-enUS.MPQ
116.7MB-> 116.7MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/enUS/expansion2-speech-enUS.MPQ
1.0MB-> 1.0MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/enUS/expansion3-locale-enUS.MPQ
55.5MB-> 55.5MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/enUS/expansion3-speech-enUS.MPQ
355.1MB-> 355.1MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/enUS/locale-enUS.MPQ
180.3MB-> 180.3MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/enUS/speech-enUS.MPQ
32.0MB-> 32.0MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/enUS/wow-update-enUS-13914.MPQ
6.2MB-> 6.2MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/enUS/Interface/Cinematics/Logo_1024.avi
4.4MB-> 4.4MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/enUS/Interface/Cinematics/Logo_800.avi
62.9MB-> 62.9MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/enUS/Interface/Cinematics/WOW_FotLK_1024.avi
54.6MB-> 54.6MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/enUS/Interface/Cinematics/WOW_FotLK_800.avi
45.4MB-> 45.4MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/enUS/Interface/Cinematics/WOW_Intro_1024.avi
39.3MB-> 39.3MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/enUS/Interface/Cinematics/WOW_Intro_800.avi
45.4MB-> 45.4MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/enUS/Interface/Cinematics/WOW_Intro_BC_1024.avi
39.4MB-> 39.4MB /P/A/G/WoW/Data/enUS/Interface/Cinematics/WOW_Intro_BC_800.avi
297.5MB-> 297.5MB [8] /P/A/G/WoW/Data/enUS/Interface/Cinematics/
11.3MB-> 11.3MB /P/A/G/WoW/Updates/wow-12911-13164-OSX-final.MPQ
15.2MB-> 15.2MB /P/A/G/WoW/Updates/wow-12911-13623-OSX-final.MPQ
1.7MB-> 1.7MB /P/A/G/WoW/Updates/wow-13164-13205-OSX-final.MPQ
2.1MB-> 2.1MB /P/A/G/WoW/Updates/wow-13205-13287-OSX-final.MPQ
1.5MB-> 1.5MB /P/A/G/WoW/Updates/wow-13287-13329-OSX-final.MPQ
2.2MB-> 2.2MB /P/A/G/WoW/Updates/wow-13329-13596-OSX-final.MPQ
1.3MB-> 1.3MB /P/A/G/WoW/Updates/wow-13596-13623-OSX-final.MPQ
20.5MB-> 20.5MB /P/A/G/WoW/Updates/wow-13623-13914-OSX-final.MPQ
55.9MB-> 55.9MB [8] /P/A/G/WoW/Updates/
520B-> 519B /P/A/G/WoW/WTF/Launcher.WTF
Pouakai/Applications/Games/WoW/WTF/I’ve omitted the legitimate from the above (log files, of course, and addons which I manually changed), but the Updates MPQ that I hadn’t got around to purging yet - definitely suspect!.
I think as a matter of urgency Blizzard should find out what has changed in the WoW Launcher and fix it. (I’ve posted the same on the Blizzard forum)
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Laurie Fleming - the singing geek
@LaurieFleming
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Can you move WoW to the Shared folder ?
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The other option here would be to simply exclude the WoW folder from Time Machine and then back it up manually. At least that way you’ll only have a single copy of the file and not multiples for each time you’ve run the game.
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-Dave Hamilton / The Mac Observer / Mac Geek Gab / Dave on Twitter
When you find a big kettle of crazy, it’s best not to stir it. -
You’re quite right, and that’s what I’ve done. But it goes against the grain, and against the philosophy of how Time Machine works. I have a list of directories which I don’t want backed up (~/Library/Caches, ~/Library/Mail Downloads for example), and which I will never want backed up. But I do want /Applications/Games/World of Warcraft/Data backed up when it changes. A touched file which has not changed (thank you, md5 checksumming!) has not changed, but that’s how Time Machine works.
When Blizzard genuinely makes an update to these files, I have to:
a) be aware that it has happened
b) manually switch those files out of the exclusion list
c) let Time Machine do its thing
d) put them back in againOtherwise I’ll be in the position, should I need to restore from backup, of recovering from an older state than I need. In fact in almost all certainty I will not want to go back to a particular point, just the latest one. Therefore I plan when Blizzard has fixed it (and there has been some minimal recognition that it’s stuffed up) to use the deletion facility within Time Machine to recover the 100G or so of multiple backups that were made before I noticed what was going on.
Signature
Laurie Fleming - the singing geek
@LaurieFleming
