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Disable Time Machine during certain hours

Is it possible to disable Time Machine backup during specific hours?

Posted on Oct 9, 2011 5:15 PM

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Posted on Oct 10, 2011 1:08 AM

Have a look at TimeMachineEditor.

19 replies

Oct 10, 2011 2:18 AM in response to 4thSpace

Sure, you can just go into System Prefs > Time Machine and 'slide' the button over to 'off'. When you want to reenable, slide it back to 'on'.


Also, be aware that in the 'Options' in Time Machine prefs, you can unselect 'backup while on battery power', so effectively unplugging your notebook will also stop TM backing up.


Now, if you meant can you schedule TM to only backup at certain times and not others, then the answer is 'no'. You could use TM editor as Stress Test pointed out, there's also a couple of other similar programs kicking about.


A different choice would be to use a different backup program from Time Machine altogether. Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! will let you schedule backups for any interval you want, and give you far more control of what is backed up (i.e., you can back up everything or just some things). It will also make your backup disc bootable, so that if your internal HD gives up the ghost, you can get back to work in no longer thanb it takes you to restart the computer (with TM, you'll have to first replace your internal HD, install the OS, then restore from TM...call that a minimum full day's work unless you happen to do that regularly and have a new HD at your fingertips...)

Oct 11, 2011 8:12 PM in response to Stress Test

I checked out TimeMachineEditor but that doesn't allow me to just block out a range of hours each day. The problem is the TimeCapsule is very loud during the middle of the night. It only backs up my laptop so I don't know why it is so busy. Lots of crunching noise coming from it during the night. I keep it in my bedroom, where my desktop is wired to it for Internet access. I just want it to be quiet during the night.


I guess softwater answered my question though:


TM to only backup at certain times and not others, then the answer is 'no'.

Oct 12, 2011 1:07 AM in response to 4thSpace

Yes, but with TimeMachineEditor you can do:


Daily at 10 AM

Daily at 11 AM

Daily at 12 AM

....

Daily at 8 PM

Daily at 9 PM


That would rund TimeMachine every hour between 10am and 9pm, or run it every second hour, when you don't need it to run so often 😉


With TM you have the advantage that it's running automatically AND TM stores many versions of one document.

With SuperDuper or CCC you have only the last one but in advantage you can start directly from that backup. With TimeMachine you first have to restore the volumen in case of a fault, to start from.


I think both have their advantages, but i like the easy working and restoring of TM for the daily use.

Oct 12, 2011 2:36 AM in response to Stress Test

Each to their own, of course, but for the sake of accuracy:

Daily at 10 AM

Daily at 11 AM

Daily at 12 AM

....

Daily at 8 PM

Daily at 9 PM



You can do this with Carbon Copy Cloner too. 😉



With TM you have the advantage that it's running automatically...


Yep, CCC runs automatically, too. 😉


AND TM stores many versions of one document.


No, CCC won't do this.


But then, personally, I've never understood the point of such redundancy on the same disk. People say it's great because they can go back to a change/save from two, three, ten, twenty saves ago...has anyone ever really done that? Well, each to their own of course, I'm just saying, TM has its problems (not least deleting without warning) and its sole advantage (multiple copies of hourly changes) seems like a feature I have no use for.

Oct 12, 2011 6:56 AM in response to softwater

Thanks. I may try and set this kind of schedule. Not sure how often TimeMachine backs up on its own but it seems to be often (maybe more than every hour?).


I did turn off TimeMachine last night and TimeCapsule continued to grind through the night. It can't be TimeMachine causing all this noise. What else could it be? The router part?

Oct 12, 2011 5:02 PM in response to softwater

softwater wrote:

AND TM stores many versions of one document.


No, CCC won't do this.

Yes, it can. See CCC's help, and the selection screen:


User uploaded file

I've never used it myself, and don't know many of the details (since I use Time Machine as my primary backup, and update my CCC clone daily as a secondary backup).



But then, personally, I've never understood the point of such redundancy on the same disk. People say it's great because they can go back to a change/save from two, three, ten, twenty saves ago...has anyone ever really done that?

Yes. It's not an everyday thing, but if a file has gotten damaged, or was changed or deleted in error and not noticed quickly, it can really save your bacon.


TM has its problems (not least deleting without warning) and its sole advantage (multiple copies of hourly changes) seems like a feature I have no use for.

To each his own, but there are other advantages to Time Machine, and some disadvantages to clones. See Time Machine vs. Clones and Archives for an overview.

Oct 12, 2011 8:38 PM in response to Pondini

Pondini wrote:


softwater wrote:

AND TM stores many versions of one document.


No, CCC won't do this.

Yes, it can.



Thanks, I'd forgotten about that option in CCC since I don't use it.


I looked at your webpage; I'm not sure I agree with you regarding clone's being slower and taking longer than TM. Mine runs in the background and I hardly notice it.


TM - especially under Lion - seemed to be forever grinding away. Sometimes TM said it was just backing up a couple of hundred MBs, and sometimes it would backup over a hundred GBs. There seemed to be no rhyme nor reason (not related to what I'd done since the previous backup). I've also experiened data loss with TM when it pruned my archives, telling me it didn't have enough disk space even though half of a 250GB disk lay empty. I then found that it'd removed everything since before the Lion install (about a year and a half's worth of backup).


Nah, I'll never use TM again, but good luck to those that do. 🙂

Oct 12, 2011 8:57 PM in response to softwater

softwater wrote:

. . .

I looked at your webpage; I'm not sure I agree with you regarding clone's being slower and taking longer than TM

Yes, incremental backups are much slower. As noted in the article, clones must examine every file on your system to determine what's changed, but Time Machine uses the File System Event Store that OSX keeps on each HFS+ volume (that's why Time Machine can only back up HFS+ volumes). On my small system, Time Machine's incremental backups usually run under a minute, but a CCC update runs about 15 minutes and takes much more of the CPU.


TM - especially under Lion - seemed to be forever grinding away.

Unless you're frequently changing lots of large files, something is wrong. Look at the sizes of what it's backing-up; if that seems much too high for what you've done since the last backup, see #D4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.


If the sizes seem reasonable, see #D2 in the same link.


I've also experiened data loss with TM when it pruned my archives, telling me it didn't have enough disk space even though half of a 250GB disk lay empty.

If you have one of the problems listed in #D4, such that it's having to do very large backups, that could happen. It's hard to tell without knowing how much data was on your system, but apparently whatever it was backing-up was over 125 GB.


I then found that it'd removed everything since before the Lion install (about a year and a half's worth of backup).

Ditto. As with a clone, if you do certain things, use apps that do certain things, or have directory problems, etc., the results may not be pretty. The key is to find and fix them before they get out of hand.

Oct 12, 2011 9:09 PM in response to Pondini

Unless you're frequently changing lots of large files, something is wrong.


No I wasn't. And yes, I figured out something was wrong after TM deleted my backups. 😉


Ditto. As with a clone, if you do certain things, use apps that do certain things, or have directory problems, etc., the results may not be pretty.



Ahh, the old 'it's your fault you must have done something wrong' argument, eh? 😝


No, TM did something wrong because it did something that


i. I didn't ask it to do, and

ii. it did it without requesting permission.


You have to have a lot of trust if you use TM because, unlike CCC, TM offers no warning or options before undertaking crtitical activities on your backups, and accept that if things go wrong it's all your own fault. Yes, I get that.


However, those two conditions are sufficient to view it as 'unreliable software' in my opinion.

Oct 12, 2011 9:48 PM in response to softwater

softwater wrote:

. . .

Ahh, the old 'it's your fault you must have done something wrong' argument, eh?

That's not what I said -- it's nobody's fault; it's the way incremental backups with archiving work; there are some situations that cause very large backups, such as VM files, large databases, etc., as detailed in the link provided.


Most likely, the same thing would have happened if you'd been using CCC's archive feature and running frequent backups, depending on which of it's "pruning" options you selected.


Would that cause you to call CCC "unreliable software" too?


No, TM did something wrong because it did something that

i. I didn't ask it to do

It did what it says it will do -- keep backups of the current contents of your system, plus "archived" copies of things you've changed or deleted, as long as there's room for them on the backup drive:


User uploaded file


ii. it did it without requesting permission.

If you mean deleting your oldest backups, that's true, to a degree. When TM was first released, with Leopard, the default was to send a message before deleting the oldest backup(s). Unfortunately, many folks didn't realize that they may not have needed the backups of things they'd deleted many months before, or couldn't decide what the message meant, or what to do, so did nothing, preventing new backups. Not a good situation, obviously.


So, effective with Snow Leopard, Apple changed it to send a message after old backups were deleted. Probably the best solution.



You clearly don't like Time Machine -- that's fine; nobody's forcing you to use it.

Oct 12, 2011 9:56 PM in response to softwater

softwater wrote:

. . .

(with TM, you'll have to first replace your internal HD, install the OS, then restore from TM...call that a minimum full day's work unless you happen to do that regularly and have a new HD at your fingertips...)

No, you don't have to install the OS before restoring TM backups. Time Machine backs up OSX along with everything else, so you only have to start from the copy of your Recovery HD on your Time Machine drive (effective with 10.7.2) or Install Disc (Snow Leopard or earlier).


And it takes no more (and often a bit less) time than "re-cloning" back to a replacement HD.

Disable Time Machine during certain hours

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