News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

November 30, 2007

software

TimeMachineScheduler frees you from time’s linear constraints

Posted Nov. 30, ’07, 9:21 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Software

TimeMachineSchedulerTime Machine may be the biggest advancement in backups since sliced bread (you didn’t know you could back up your data in carbohydrates? It works great—just don’t toast them), but it has some shortcomings. For one thing, for a mechanism that purpots to allow you to control the very space/time continuum, you’re pretty limited in how often you can tell it to backup your files. If you go by the usual schedule, Time Machine backs up once per hour; you can force a backup, as we’ve pointed out, but only if you want to keep Time Machine in your Dock.

If, however, you simply seek a longer interval between backups, Stefan Klieme’s got you covered with his TimeMachineScheduler. Using TMS, as I’ll call it, you can set an interval between 1 and 12 hours, and set it to run at startup and/or login. It works by installing its own launchd daemon and disabling Time Machine’s built in scheduler, but you can always uninstall it if it’s a problem. And it provides a handy button for backing up immediately, too. You don’t have to run the app constantly, either; just launch it when you want to make an adjustment.

This might actually be handy for me; since I’m running off a MacBook, primarily, I don’t spend most of my time plugged into my backup drive, so there’s no point in it trying to backup every hour anyway.

[via Infinite Loop]


2 Comments

j said:

You can also force a backup by right-clicking the TM drive in the Finder sidebar and choosing "Back Up Now". If you have a laptop, it's helpful to keep the drive in the sidebar anyway so that you can eject the disk before disconnecting it. So no need to keep TM in your Dock.

November 30, 2007 10:44 AM
mcsey said:

Cool. Thanks.

December 1, 2007 7:42 AM

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