Automating Time Machine Backups -- Is it Possible?

Here's what I'd like to do via an Automator application that is fired up at
login....

a) Do nothing until a specified time and then

b) Open Time Machine Preferences

c) Change the Time Machine target drive to a different drive

d) Immediately run a Time Machine backup to that just selected target drive

e) Open Time Machine Preferences

f) Change the Time Machine target drive back to the original drive

The goal is to automatically, once a day, create a backp of the Time Machine
Backup drive

 

As things now stand I have two external drives devoted to Time Machine.
Normally one of them is the recipient of the hourly Time Machine backups.
What I'd like to have happen is that once a day Time Machine would be
redirected to the other drive in order to bring that one up to date after
which Time Machine would be directed back to the original drive. The result
would be my having a daily backup of my Time Machine drive.

As things currently stand such a backup, when manually performed, takes just
a few minutes. This contrasts to the several hours it takes to copy the
folder which contains a Time Machine backup.

 

There was an article posted to one of the Mac sites recently that
demonstrated how Time Machine behaviour can be tweaked in a variety of
ways. This might be a place to start.

Sorry, but I don't recall the link of hand. It might have been The
Unofficial Apple Weblog.

 

Build a RAID 1 mirror'd volume and point TM at it. Would be a lot more
efficient, imo.

 

[responding to my wanting to once an evening redirect Time Machine to a
different drive long enought to complete a single backup anda then return
Time Machine to its normal drive, a process that would take minutes as
opposed to the hours copying the Time Machine backup folder would take]

Actually I'm often awake in the middle of the night (sometimes my most
constructive hours) and would like the interruption of the normal hourly Time
Machine backups to be as short as possible.

 

[responding to my wanting to once a night redirect Time Machine to a
different volume for just a single backup run and then restore it to the
normally used volume]

Unfortunately I don't believe I have the hard drives to do such. The two
drives I currently use for Time Machine backups are each 300 GB and the size
of my internal drive is 160 GB. My Time Machine backups currently run a bit
over 200 GB.

 

It's much easier and more logical to use a separate clone program to do
that, and leave Time Machine alone.

 

Raid the two backup drives together, so you only do one backup, two for
the price of one. The size of the internal drive isn't the issue.

 

Carbon Copy Cloner would do it as an incremental backup. It would only
copy over what has changed. Worth a try?
Andy

 

I'm currently cloning the Time Machine drive via SuperDuper! which does an
excellent and accurate job, correctly preserving metadata and such. The
downside is that it takes about an hour and a quarter to do its things. I've
noted that if I switch my Time Machine drives that an update takes only a
matter of minutes and that's why I was curious as to whether I could have
something totally automatic that would run unattended once a day.

 

No, perhaps I'm missing something!

Are you suggesting that the Time Machine backup itself be directed to the
RAID mirror? If that would work and if that accomplishes my goal of having
duplicate copies, than that just might be the way to go.

 

Exactly.

Then you only have to convince yourself that your trust Time Machine
well enough

 

I followed Jolly Roger's suggestion and set up two of my external drives as a
RAID mirror and am at this moment running a Time Machine backup to it.

We shall see!

 

Yes, and if time machine screws up you'll still have another backup.

 

Interesting to learn that was his suggestion. ;-)

 

Actually, although I think I didn't mention it elsewhere in this thread, I
have six external hard drives, three drives in each of two separate physical
locations, "home" and "office". One of those drives in each location is used
for a SuperDuper! clone of my internal drive and two of those drives were
used for Time Machine, one the Time Machine "primary" and one the Time
Machine "backup".

At the suggestion made earlier today by Jolly Roger I have just completed a
Time Machine backup to two of my external drives set up in a mirrored RAID
configuration. This was using the "home" configuration, and methinks It is
quite likely that I will configure the "office" configuration in the same
manner.

 

[commenting on having attributed to Jolly Roger the suggestion of using a
mirrored RAID configuration for my Time Machine.

Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame........on me!

I will apologetically state here and now that it was indeed Randy Howard that
made the original RAID suggestion and it was Jolly Roger who offered a
clarification to a question I had regarding the RAID configuration.

 

Oops, I just checked and Jolly Roger is right in having been the first to
mentiion using a RAID configuration, albeit in a different arm of the threads
going back to my original posting.

 

Although you probably already know that NNTP traffic is asynch, fwiw,
your reply showed up on my system after I posted my reply. *shrug*

 

The emoticon wasn't there by accident.