How can you monitor the progress of a backup? I use timemachine and an external drive to do my backups on my 09 Macbook pro. I want to be able to see the amount of files transferred and time remaining or any other pertinent info. Not just a spinning wheel.
macbook pro, Mac OS X (10.6.2)
That's good advice unless Time Machine is in that phase of the backup process where it says only "Preparing backup..." and time isn't shown, as in the screen shots below. I've been using Time Machine for years, at least since 2010. This has always been the case, just as it is now, in macOS 10.12 (Sierra).
What's needed is a way to monitor Time Machine's progress "behind the scenes". Can it be done with Activity Monitor or Console apps? Is there some log file being kept? (Log files can be added to and viewed in Console.app.)
Open System Preferences -> Time Machine. At the bottom of the window you should see a line saying something like "Show Time Machine in menu bar". Tick it. Now you have the TM icon in your menu bar. Whenever a backup is running, click on it. You will see how much data is already backed up and how much data the whole backup is.
If the backup is not running, it shows the time of the last successful backup.
I don't know, I use bootable clones myself and it shows me the progress of the backup and updating of files.
However I can point you to this guy who is the local TM guru
If you want to learn more about all sorts of backups to diversify your restore options (TM can fail to restore properly), including bootable clones etc. then read my UT here on the subject.
Most commonly used backup methods explained
I personally don't use TimeMachine, preferring the more advanced bootable clone options.
This is a reason why MacOS is superior to Windows. There is always a way of doing what you want. No extra software needed!
How do you monitor backup progress
