Apple | Mac
I’ve written about this topic a few times in the past, but I recently had the need to stop Time Machine backups from occurring for a period of time, but I didn’t want to completely shut off Time Machine—for fear that I would forget to turn it back on and it would be weeks before I noticed.
Read more “Get control of your Time Machine backup schedule”
Apple | Mac
Time Machine, Apple’s built-in file backup and recovery tool, is awesome… eventually. I say that because it’s sloooooowww.
Apple | Mac
By default, Apple’s Time Machine performs backups every hour. For many people, this simply isn’t necessary. And for those who actually do alter numerous files (especially large ones) every hour, your probably don’t want the system using resources for backups every hour.
Apple really should offer a way to adjust the backup time in the System Preferences, but they don’t. Fortunately, you can still do it using the Terminal app in your Utilities folder.
Open Terminal and paste the code below into the Terminal window and hit the Return key (make sure you copy the exact text below.) Enter your Admin password when it asks and hit return again:
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 7200
The number at the end of that line is the amount of seconds between backups. By default, it’s 3600 (one hour). In the code above, I have it set to two hours, but you can enter any amount of seconds you wish, such as 10800 for three hours, or 14400 for four hours, etc.
Apple | Mac
Time Machine backs up files every hour, and if you’re a power-user who updates and saves lots of files (particularly large ones), Time Machine could theoretically never stop working. The problem is that for many users, the Mac can get bogged-down while backing up, in some cases to the point of being unusable.
Thankfully, Stefan Klieme wrote a simple piece of software called TimeMachineScheduler that allows you to easily adjust the backup interval of Time Machine. With TimeMachineScheduler you can set the interval from one to 12 hours, limit backups to WiFi or hard-wired connection only, skip backups during specified hours, and more.
TimeMachineScheduler is free (donations welcome) and works with OS X 10.5 or later on Intel Macs. Because my particular workflow doesn’t require hourly backups, I love this little utility and the features it offers me.
Apple | Mac
Error messages on the Mac have always been a mystery, rarely do they tell you anything that can point you in the right direction for troubleshooting. Mac OS X is no different, and Time Machine has plenty of its own error messages to learn and love.
Thankfully, James Pond has put together a pretty good Time Machine troubleshooting guide and made it available for everyone.
I came across the site this past weekend because my Time Machine backups kept failing, and I had no idea why. The site offers a Dashboard Widget that helped diagnose the problem, and in fact pointed me directly to the file that was causing the backup to fail.
Apple | Mac
If you’re running Leopard and you’re using Time Machine to backup your Mac to an external hard drive, you may become frustrated with how often Time Machine backs up your drive. This is especially true if you save or create a lot of files. When Time Machine is doing it’s work, your drive may become unresponsive, and at the very least, your backup drive can fill up quick. 
You could hack the .plist file to alter the intervals of Time Machine, but an easier way is to use TimeMachineEditor. TME provides a simple way for you to set the time(s) at which Time Machine does it’s thing.