Small hdd with Time Machine

Go to System Preferences > Time Machine then click Options. You should be able to exclude folders you don't want to backup to Time Machine. Tell us if it works!

 

short answer is: yes but its a risky strategy and it degrades the primary purpose of a Time Machine, which is to give you a fool-proof and full backup of your entire system in case of catastrophic events.

read this:http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/12/road_to_mac_os_x_leopard_time_machine.html&page=1

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/15622.html

Personally, I do a complete backup and turn off time machine. When major changes in the system are in effect, I delete the old backup and do a fresh backup to save space on the backup HD. But the best strategy is to just let TM go on automatic mode.

 

I use a comparably small (160g) HD and it gives me about 3 weeks work of continuous backup. I guess it depends on your use case - small HD's arent that bad as time machine backups but the bigger your HD is the farther back in time you can go. Depending on how far back you need to go this may or may not be an issue. I just want time machine so I at least have a week's worth of daily backup i can go back to - say I deleted a photoshop file I made yesterday. Or I prefer last week's version of a design i made. My mantra in backup is if I can't remember what it was I probably don't need it. So 3 weeks worth of daily backup is ok for me. I just do individual backups of files at the end of each month manually to dvd's or to my 600gig dreamhost account.

Now, If you're looking at selected backups then time machine isnt the way to go since there is only option to exclude folders from back up, and not the other way around - like you need. It backs up everything by default unless you specify that you dont want a folder backed up. I suggest just manually backing up files you need backed up since it doesn't look like you need daily backups to browse and restore from.