Setting Start Time for Time Machine Backups

What I would like is to be able to set the exact time at which the
hourly Time Machine backups take place. For example, 1:00, 2:00,
3:00.....

The reason for this is that there is a conflict between SuperDuper! and
Time Machine if Time Machine is running when a scheduled SuperDuper!
backup initiates, the result being a failure of the SuperDuper! backup.
This happens if borth the Time Machine and SuperDuper! backups are to a
Time Capsule.

So what I want to do is to make sure that Time Machine is not running
at the time a SuperDuper! backup initiates.

Many thanks in advance for suggestions and such!

 

After making my post I discovered what looks like it will do the job in
TimeMachineEditor. We shall see!

 

Been using it for quite some time. In fact, I'm still using v.2.2 -- I
didn't upgrade to v. 2.5, as I didn't like the idea of having a daemon
intrude into my system (which, as I understand, is how 2.5.x operates -- a
change that was made when SL was released).

 

That sounds like a bug with SD!. Have you checked with Shirt Pocket
support?

 

I've had several discussions with Dave Nanian of Shirt Pocket regarding
this, and am trying to narrow down the exact circumstances of the
failure.

 

I don't think it's a SuperDuper!/Time Machine conflict/bug, per se (see, for
example, http://www.shirt-pocket.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5006). I'd be
inclined to suspect it's somehow related to Time Capsule.

 

I purchased my Time Capsule in early January of this year and in
addition to the Time Machine hourly backups there have also been two
nightly scheduled SuperDuper! backups to the Time Capsule. Thee are
also Everything ran without any apparent problems until I upgraded to
OS X 10.6.3 and then I started having frequent failures of one of the
SuperDuper! scheduled backups, the one which backed up my computer. The
other SuperDuper! backup which didn't fail was that of an external
drive. With a bit of experimenting I established that the failures
apparently occurred if Time Machine was running when the backup of the
computer itself was initiated. I've installed TimeMachineEditor and
have programmed it to have my hourly Time Machine backups occur on the
hour, and have set my nightly SuperDuper! backups to initiate at 15
minutes past the hour so that there is essentially no chance that there
would be an overlap between Time Machine and the backups, and this
seems to be eliminating the problem, time will tell. I will be keeping
Dave Nanian of Shirt Pocket, the implementors of SuperDuper!, updated
as to whether my workaround eliminates the problem. I'd be interested
if there are others who have experienced the same problem.

 

I assumed that it was somehow related to Time Capsule, as I don't have Time
Capsule and have never experienced a conflict between SD! and TM. Though,
admittedly, they rarely run at the same time, on those occasions when they
happen to be running simultaneously -- say, when TM is going through a deep
traversal and it's still backing up when SD! kicks in -- they never
conflict. I'm currently on SL 10.6.3 (see sig), SD! 2.6.2, and TME 2.2.
(BTW: Did you get the installer I sent you?)

The only times SD! has failed on me has been when the target volume
(external drive) was too full (i.e., nearing capacity) and a large file on
the source volume (internal drive) was being modified while the backup was
occurring. But that's to be expected. (FWIW, open MS Office apps -- even if
they're not being actively used -- have a habit of making db changes in the
middle of backups!) But, as I said above, I've not had any apparent SD!
problems due to overlapping backups with TM.

 

On 2010-04-14 09:12:01 -0500, Nick Naym said:

[in reference to TimeMachineEditor]

I did get the installer you sent (many thanks) but by the time I
received it I had already installed TimeMachineEditor and it seems to
be working fine, forcing the Time Machine backups to always run on the
hour, e.g. 1:00, 2:00, 3:00.... This allows me to schedule the
SuperDuper! backups at a time when Time Machine is certain to not be
running.

 

Of course it works...the thing I don't like about the Snow Leopard version
is that unlike previous versions, it no longer sets a system parameter to
tell TM when to back up, but instead installs a daemon that runs in the
background and requires you to manually shut off TM. All the advantages of
the Leopard version are now gone. Why be forced to rely on a (by definition,
intrusive) background daemon, not be able to see TM active, and not have a
reliable and visible indicator of when the last and next backup occurred?
That's why I stayed with the last Leopard version (2.2).

Huh? That's pretty much TM's default. What have you changed?

I find that hourly backups are unnecessarily too often. I've set TME to
schedule Calendar Intervals every 2 hours during normal working hours, every
3 hours at night until midnight, and none after that.

TME 2.2 will do/does that very nicely.

 

Huh? in Leopard, you had to manually shut off TM if you wanted it to stop.
That's what the ON/OFF switch in the TM Preferences was for.

Curious, I can easily tell that my latest backup was today at 9:28 AM, and
that my next backup will be today at 10:25 AM. It's right there in the TM
Preferences.

He said "on the hour", not "every hour".

 

On 2010-04-14 11:33:15 -0500, Nick Naym said:

[commenting on how I set TimeMachineEditor to backup "on the hour"]

My experience has been that although Time Machine's default is to
backup hourly the times of the backups are not synchronized to the
hour. That is, and I just opened Time Machine to check, and found a
series of backups that ran at roughly 45 minutes after the hour. My
gutsy is that the default is based upon when the Mac is started.

And after having set the schedule with TimeMachineEditor the backups
are now initiated according to the schedule I set, that is, 1:00, 2:00,
3:00....

 

This seems still to be a workaround. The proper way to do this would be
to run either of both from a script that waits until the backup is done
and then starts the other.


Jochem

 

This seems still to be a workaround. The proper way to do this would be
to run either of both from a script that waits until the backup is done
and then starts the other.[/QUOTE]

Why would that be the proper way? So long as TM can schedule itself, why
not just use a utility to tell it what time to start, and compute the
schedule from that point onward?

 

Because this way you will have to guess when TM will be done with its
backup and if it isn't you get a problem. As most workarounds it will
work most of the time and may still bite you later on.


Jochem

 

Because this way you will have to guess when TM will be done with its
backup and if it isn't you get a problem. As most workarounds it will
work most of the time and may still bite you later on.[/QUOTE]

After the initial backups, neither will take more than a half hour, so
schedule the other one at the half-hour mark.

 

After the initial backups, neither will take more than a half hour,[/QUOTE]

Maybe, maybe not.

 

I have had both SuperDuper! and Time Machine backups take longer than 30
minutes. Not often, but it happens. Running 10.5.8 on a G4 with 120GB
of used space on my boot drive.

 

....and there is just such a way. The following Terminal command will
turn Time Machine off:

defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine AutoBackup
-bool NO

And this one will turn it back on:

defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine AutoBackup
-bool YES

Have SD! run the first one before it starts backing up, and the second
one after it finishes. You can tell SD! to do this in Options ->
Advanced.

 

Nice.

But I remain suspicious about the whole "problem": There is no inherent
reason that SD! should fail if it and TM run simultaneously -- unless there
is something unusual going on that is somehow unique to the way SD! and/or
TM interoperate with TC.