Exclude Directories From Search in Linux

We’re all familiar with the scenario, one makes a mistake with the path input and already the file is lost in the file system. Now you want to find the lost file again…

find / -name lost_file

Now, however, like me, you have a server with 12 TB of attached ZFS storage and you don’t want the find command to search it as well. You can do this as follows:

find / ! \( -path '/zfs_mount' -prune \) -name lost_file

By the way, if you want to omit e.g. another large directory now, the sections can be lined up:

find / ! \( -path '/zfs_mount' -prune \) ! \( -path '/big_directory' -prune \) -name lost_file