How can I set up a Macbook to wake up at a certain time for backing up?

Question

My wife objects strenuously to Time Capsule (wireless) backups so I finally set it to once a day, starting at 7 pm. You would think that would work but NO, runs too long and even next morning to finish. We are backing up only documents, mail, safari, etc. — no Apps.
We also back up online to BackJack once a day.
So I am thinking what may be a solution is to have it run at night, when she is asleep and the only time she is not using it.
But how do I wake it up at the designated time? If we leave the lid up will just start when something is scheduled like Time Machine or Backjack? Or do I need additional software?
Thanks,
Richard

Answer 1

Richard Pitcairn wrote:
Basically, for my wife's settings, we exclude iTunes, movies, Apps but do back up Mail, Safari, Docs, Prefs. I have watched it and it does indeed run a long time.
Then something is broken. Backups are only useful when done from a known good system. Then, if that system dies, is stolen, etc. you can restore from your backups. You are backing up a known bad system. If and when you need to restore (and you may, considering something is wrong), you may find your backed up data to be garbage. It is worth investigating why those backups are taking so long. You shouldn't have to exclude anything. You shouldn't be able to generate enough hourly changes to cause the backup to be so slow as to interfere with normal operation.
Two things that could be improved are the memory on the Macbook and the available disk space on the Time Capsule. You are low on both. However, I suspect the problem is elsewhere. You might want to review her log files during a backup to see if there are any error messages.
As for using BackJack, she is an artist and has about 40 GB of photos on her drive that if lost, might be the end of our relationship.
Then those files need to be archived, not backed up, to one or more devices. They should probably also be verified. I have seen people dutifully run backups for months, never realizing they were backing up junk and overwriting the previous, valid backups. I discovered that only when called in to do a system restore from backup.
Time Machine too slow, too small a capacity. I ran Mozy for a while but really slow and CPU consuming. BJ is reasonably fast, does incremental backups, does tie up CPU nearly as much.
I think you have jumped to some invalid conclusions based on some other, underlying issue. When your system if functioning properly, Time Machine should make anything else look like a joke. Your system is sickly, and backing that up isn't doing you any favors.
My advice is to shut down all backups, perform an archive backup, and verify that the archived data is valid. This might be an excellent occasion to use a cloning tool such as Carbon Copy Cloner. Then investigate why your backups are so slow. I suggest buying a new hard drive anyway for that 40 GB of critical data. May as well get an additional hard drive for the Time Capsule and some more RAM. Then re-partition that machine and reinstall the OS, perhaps onto yet another new drive. That is probably the quickest, easiest, and cheapest way to get your systems back up to speed and running well for the long term.