Time Machine: hourly vs daily

You have it right.

When I first read about time machine, the thing I wanted to know was, "if it gets in my way, can I change the time between backups?" As it turns out, you most certainly can do that.

But once I saw how little it seemed to take of system resources, I left it at the default, hourly. That provides better protection from crazy software or "oops, I did not mean to throw that away." Whether it has a ton of stuff to save or maybe just one file makes no difference to me. Time machine s there, doing its job and I don't have to think about it. It is working every hour and saving any changes. When I need it backup data, I know it will be there.

Time machine's other insanely great feature is that it can restore one file or a folder or your whole computer as of ANY given date, provided those files have not aged off the end when the drive got full.

Time machine does its work at low priority in the background, so as not to interfere with your important work. all that happens when you make few changes in a day is that the files stored during each backup session will be fewer, and the backup up will be over very quickly.

why do you feel the need to reduce your protection to "daily"? Is storing backups getting in your way?

Depending on the drive, some spin down automatically after a period of non-use, some do not. The wear of spinning up again probably outweighs any real benefits of spinning down.

Time Machine's "claim to fame" is that it is the backup that gets done. It does not ruin performance of the rest of the computer while doing its backup operations. You do not have to set aside a "Special Time" when you only do backups. When you need it, your Time machine Backup is much more likely to be there.