Time Machine frequency in Lion vs. Snow Leopard

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Time Machine frequency in Lion vs. Snow Leopard

I've been using Time Machine in Snow Leopard, and I was quite happy with the way things worked. I'm using an external HD as volume for backups, and I would connect it via USB, Time Machine would make its backup, and then I'd eject and disconnect it again. After about a week Time Machine would remind me that it's about time to make another backup, by popping up a notification window, and also by displaying a exclamation mark in the Time Machine symbol in the upper right corner of the screen. That was perfect, and one week is about the backup frequency I want.

Now, in Lion, Time Machine seems to be set up to do backups every 2h or so, and if I don't connect the external HD within these 2h, the Time Machine symbol in the upper right displays the exclamation mark, but no popup window appears.

It looks like I can't adjust the backup frequency somewhere in the Time Machine preferences, or at least I don't see how. I would like to (1) have the longer (I think it was about a week) backup frequency and (2) I would also like to get the warning message that Time Machine couldn't complete its backup once the set frequency has passed. Basically I would like Time Machine to behave similarly as in Snow Leopard.

I don't carry my external HD with me all the time, and I certainly don't want to make backups every 2h. I know I just could wait for a week, but the Time Machine reminder was great.

Thanks for your help.

Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Aug 23, 2011 10:33 AM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Aug 23, 2011 2:13 PM in response to hmalisa

I haven't tried this, in fact I gave up on TM totally, but looks like you can set it using the Terminal, not sure if you can set it for a week's worth of seconds though...

http://www.trickyways.com/2010/04/how-to-change-time-machine-backup-interval-on- mac-os-x/

Might be better to have iCal execute a Script once a week that turns TM ON & Off...

The first thing to know is that pretty much everything you do in Time Machine is going to require elevated privileges. So if you are writing a script, it should run as such, or if you’re running each command independently you will likely need to prefix them with sudo. Let’s start with a computer that doesn’t have Time Machine enabled. To enable it, use tmutil along with the enable verb:
tmutil enable
To disable Time Machine, use the disable verb:
tmutil disable
This is the equivalent of sliding the Time Machine slider between the ON and OFF positions.

http://krypted.com/mac-os-x/mass-deploying-time-machine/

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Answer 2

Sep 18, 2011 10:05 AM in response to hmalisa

I've been trying to find a way to make my backups happen once a day in Lion, instead of once an hour.

There used to be a trick in Snow Leopard and previous versions that allowed you to change this using this Terminal command (where 86400 is the number of seconds between backups):

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 86400

However that doesn't appear to work in Lion.

So I found this software, and I'm testing it now. It claims to do what I need.

http://timesoftware.free.fr/timemachineeditor/

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Answer 3

Sep 18, 2011 10:09 AM in response to Elliot Jordan

I'll second the recommendation of Time Machine Editor. I used it under Snow Leopard. Time Machine is so screwy for me under Lion that I'm just doing 2 or 3 manual updates per day until Apple sorts it out, hopefully with 10.7.2.

Note that I'm having a problem with Time Machine, and others are also, but it doesn't mean that you are or will. Here's what I'm experiencing:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3190305?tstart=0

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