Setting time for Time Machine backup to run

Is it possible to set Time Machine to run at a particular time of day? It always seems to start a backup at about 10:00 pm when I'm right in the middle of working on something. Seems to be sort of useless to perform a backup WHILE changes are being made. I'd like to set it to run at like 3:30 am, when necessary.
Is there a way to do that?
Thanks!

check out _*Time Machine Editor*_.

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Do I need to keep my external hard drive connected at all times for time capsule?

Do I need to keep my external hard drive connected at all times for time capsule?

Hi,
I have a similar question. I have backed up my external hard drive through my computer, onto my TC. When I go into TM, it doesn't show the external hard drive unless it is connected to the computer. Can I access the info from the external hard drive that is on the TC if I don't have the hard drive plugged in? If so, how can I do that?
Thanks,
Bernadette

New External Drive how do I set it for Time Machine?

I just bought a new 250g firewire to back up my hard drive - I formatted it and it's ok and all but I want to use it to back up my entire hard drive.
I thought I was supposed to make a Disk Image?? but browsing these forums it seems I was supposed to designate it for Time Machine? I didn't know that. Can I still do that? If so what do I do? and how do I do it?
also what is disk image? I thought that was supposed to be the back up feature -
and if anyone else knows and I'm allowed more questions - I really wanted to install Final Cut Studio Pro on the external drive because apparently it ***** up disk space like a --- -well you know ----- - but it says it has to be on my regular drive - does that mean I have to uninstall some programs? can I set other software to work off the external or am I going to have the same problem?
I'm so ******!! I bought the 120 g drive thinking it was enough to run programs off of and use the other for data storage - apparently not!
I'm about 10 gigs short right now and that doesn't even count leaving something for extra space.
I'm in a time crunch too - ok who isn't I know - but really - I'm on vaca now and was supposed to be working on my projects but instead am babysitting this freakin' computer and am really getting ******!!
so anyone that can jump in here and help please do so. I appreciate it very much am used to windows machines am new to mac in case that wasn't already blatantly apparent!

No disc image is required. Prepare the drive as follows:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Connect the drive to a Firewire port. Open Time Machine preferences and select the drive as the TM backup drive and turn on TM.
If you use the external drive for backups you should not use it for installing applications or storing other files. It should be used as a dedicated backup drive. If you need additional storage space get another external drive.
See Disk Image for discussion of what a disc image is.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Backup and Restore.
Hopefully the next vacation you go on you will prepare for more thoroughly in advance. And, don't swear at the computer - it's a machine and only does what you tell it to do. If you need to swear at something look in the mirror!

How much time for Time Machine's first backup?

Hello,
I recently bought a 2TB external hard disk. I partitioned into one disk of 500GB (for storage), and one disk of 1.5TB (for a backup with Time Machine).
It's connected with the Firewire 800 port of my Macbook Pro mid-2010.
I know the first backup is slow, but after 30 hours, it has only backed up 67GB, over the 270GB it has to backup.
I find this very very slow, even for a first backup! Is it normal?
Does it slow the backup if I use my computer in the mean time?
Does it slow the backup to have partitioned my external hard disk?
I already took some folders off the backup, deactivated Spotlight on the external disk, all I found on the web! But it's not going faster...!
Thank you a lot for your experiences / advices.

If you're doing a full backup (rather than an incremental backup), you'll have to copy 730 GB of files. If you only have 2 hours, that's 375 Gb/ hour or 106 Mb/ s, which is going to be more than a low-end NAS is going to be able to handle. If you have a 5 hour window, you'd be talking about 41 Mb/s, which is right about the disk I/O a low-end NAS.
At a minimum, you have to have enough disk bandwidth to handle the backup in your time window. In calculating your available bandwidth, make sure you account for the bandwidth other operations are using (i.e. if you are backing up to the same set of disks your database is running on).
Justin
Distributed Database Consulting, Inc.
http://www.ddbcinc.com/askDDBC

Which disk did Time machine backup if running Mac OSX 10.6.8 on an external startup disk?

The original hard drive on my 2007 iMac was pretty full, so I was using an external hard drive as the startup disk while I got around to replacing the original hard drive. I could still see the original hard drive and its contents and it still had a bootable copy of OSX 10.6.8 on it, but I was starting up from the external drive running OSX 10.6.8. I recently attached another external drive and backed up with Time Machine. Now the original internal hard drive has crashed. I can no longer see it to even try to repair it. My question is, was that internal hard drive backed up with the Time Machine backup, or was only the external startup disk backed up? If the internal one was backed up, how can I retore it's contents to another drive? - Thanks

Sorry to hear.
Other possibilities...
Data Rescue...
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
(Has a Free Demo to see if it could or not, but you'll need another drive to recover to).
rccharles on file recovery...
"Stellar Phoenix Macintosh - Mac data recovery software, recovers data from damaged, deleted, or corrupted volumes and even from initialized disks."
They have a trial version, so I guess you can see if your data can be recovered...
http://www.stellarinfo.com/mac-data-recovery.htm
FileSalvage is an extremely powerful Macintosh application for exploring and recovering deleted files from a drive or volume. FileSalvage is designed to restore files that have:
    * been accidentally deleted.
    * become unreadable due to media faults.
    * been stored on a drive before it was re-initialized/formatted.
http://subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id= 1

Time machine backup keeps running, total rising

Hi all,
My Macbook Pro (late 11, osx 10.8.2, everything updated) has suddenly started having a roblem with time machine. I'm using an external harddisk (Western digital Passport, 500 Gb) to backup my 250 GB Internal SSD. It's been working fine for the 5 months I've had them both. Now it has suddenly developed a problem where the Time Machine backup looks like it will go on for an infinite amount of time:
When the backup starts, after teh "Preparing backup..." cycle, it starts off displaying a sensible amount of backup to run (e.g., "backing up 0 MB of 980 MB"). Then after hitting or getting close to that total, the target amount rises contantly to always be ahead of the backup amount, i.e., it will start:
backing up 1.2 GB of 1.7 GB
backing up 2.3 GB of 2.5 GB
backing up 4.6 GB of 4.8 GB
etc
The longest I've left this for is about 25 minutes and it has no signs of stopping. Is there a solution to this problem? I noticed some similar questions on the forum but from 2 years ago, and some links that were suggested as possible answers are now no longer working. Any help gratefully received!

I did find a solution which appears to be working, at least in my case. Here is what I discovered was happening on my Mac Pro:
On one of my internal hard drives, I had created 4 different folders, and those folders contained various sub-folders. Just for the sake of this discussion, We'll call them folders 1-4. When I checked Get Info on the HD as a whole, it told me 1.12 of 2.0 TB was used, which was accurate. When I checked folders 1-4, their totals all added up to 1.12 TB used. However, When I went into certain SUB-folders within folders 1-4, and added up their totals using the Get Info command, it did not equal the total HD space used when I checked the main folder as a whole.
In other words, if I had 3 sub-folders in the "Main" folder #2 - and folder #2, using Get Info, said it contained a total of 450 GB, when I add up the 3 sub-folders contained within folder #2, it would equal 750 GB.
These extra GB, located in only a couple of places on sub-folders of the HD, were confusing Time Machine. It would act as stated above... it would take the total of 1.12 TB for that drive, attempt to back it up, but when it reached that total, suddenly, OS X ML would realize there was more data in folder #2's sub-folder, and the numbers would continually rise until the external backup drive was full, thus creating an error on Time Machine's backup.
Now, I don't know why this happened. Apparently when I deleted certain files and emptied the trash, it didn't completely erase them. I've tried using "Secure Empty Trash," but with the large video files I use, the empty procedure freezes before it can finish. I cannot explain this phenomenon because I'm not well-versed on the inner-workings of OS X.
My solution was simple, albeit a pain. I went into the sub-folder, selected all the items inside (folders, documents, videos, audio, etc.) and moved them out of that sub-folder. Now, they are all floating freely in folder #2. Then, I deleted that sub-folder, emptied the trash, and then re-created that sub-folder with the same name. Finally, I moved all the items from that sub-folder back into the newly created one, and voila!!!! When I added up all the sub-folders totals via Get Info, they matched exactly what Get Info proclaimed for folder #2!
Again, don't know why this happened, but I was able to successfully back up everything, and have had no troubles in the week and a half since.
If any of this doesn't make sense, please feel free to ask questions. But this is how I solved the problem.

Do I need a copy of DSC run-time for every machine?

Do I need to purchase a dsc run-time engine for every machine that will be running stand alone executables.

Yes if you wish to use the DSC features like the Engine, logging, alarming, etc.
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MacBook suddenly not finding external HD set up for Time Machine

I have a WD MyPassport that I used via USB for Time Machine backups. Suddenly, it won't show up in my Finder (listed under Devices as MyPassport). I've had similar problems in the past, and have been able to pull it up by doing a quick spotlight or finder search, then dragging it over to my list of devices. It's not working this time, and I'm getting a Time Machine Error saying "backup delayed." "The Backup disk is not available." I've already shut down my computer and restarted it, to no avail. Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance!
Joanne

Try Repairing it, per #A5 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
If that doesn't help, it may be a connection problem or a problem with the drive. Try different ports, cables, and combinations of the two (a plug that works fine in one port may not make good contact in another).

What's a reasonable amount of time for time machine to "prepare" a hard drive?

I'm trying to put my time machine backup onto a new 3TB external hard drive (my iMac has 500Gb of data). The first external drive said it would take 11 days to back up. After it was running for 3 days I asked an apple genius how long it should take to create this time machine using USB 2.0 and was told it should take no more than 10-11 hours. He informed me that the hard drive was probably bad. I have since purchased a new hard drive and am currently trying to put a time machine backup on it. I started 4 hours ago and the time machine still says it is "preparing backup." At least the first drive was quicker to prepare the backup and gave me a time estimate.
Is this an appropriate amount of time to set up time machine? Is something wrong with my iMac? Can both hard drives be bad out of the box? Am I too impatient?

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message. Clear the text field and scroll back in the log to that time. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

Can wifi and ethernet be used same time for time machine?

Hi
Can an ethernet cable be used for the big backups with wifi being used for interim backups?
It seems the wifi method is ok for working in another room, albeit very slow. But when i am near the time machine unit would it be possible to backup via an ethernet cable and if so how would i set this method up?
ANy help appreciated.
Rgds
kev

Yes, it is possible for a computer to have two (or, if you have a tower, even more) IP addresses. By default the computer will use the one that is first on the list in the network panel in System Preferences.

Industry Standard TIME for database daily backup?

We have many databases in our company for which our Database backups are forced to be run by System Administrators at 3PM since their tape backups are starting from 4PM.
As a DBA I am suggesting to run all the tape backups late night so that I can schedule my Database bacukps at atleast 10PM daily.
What is the industry standard for running daily database backups time? Can somebody please provide some links for such standards from a authorising body like Gartner, etc?
Thanks in advance.

There is no standard time as this depends on many factors (business working hours, scheduled concurrent programs, activities on the system, whether you have global offices with different timings, ..etc). For most companies, I believe the best time to take a backup is when there are less activity on the system (which is usually late at night).
The question is, what type of backup you do? If it is an offline backup, and you are not affected by any of the above factors, then you should be OK to run it whenever it is suitable for you. If you use an online backup, you could simply keep the application/database running and take a backup.
Thanks,
Hussein

Approximate time for Taking Oracle Backup

Can you guys tell me how can I guess
1.what time should be taken for a Oracle database's full export backup ?
2.what time for a full online Physical backup ?
3.what time for a full offline Physical backup ?
We can see the size of the associated datafiles of the database from dba_datafiles. We have only that clue and the database is residing on an AIX box.
Any good idea will be appretiated.
Also please give me the idea on which factors the time for backup depends. And how it can be done in good speed.

Might be that sac-Pune's timing information is wrong. But he could understand my question and tried to answer with a case study. Ok I really tried to get the answer from a person who has good hands on experience. And who has handled oracle backups on different hardwares and also different OS.
I know that the backup timing depends on the size . Suppose we take a case study
Environment parameters:
1. Database size: 100 gb
2. Hardware/OS : IBM AIX
3. Memory : 4 GB
4. Number of CPU: 4
5. Oracle version 9.2.0.7
1.what time should be taken for a Oracle database's full export backup ?
2.what time for a full online Physical backup ?
3.what time for a full offline Physical backup ?
Can any one give me the approximate timing for those ? 30mins plus minus will be accepted.
Can we deduce any formula on backup timing as 3 environment parameters are numeric.
Is there any proportionate relation in timing of Export backup and Online physical backup?
or
Is there any proportionate relation in timing of Online physical backup and Offline physical backup?
or
Is there any proportionate relation in timing of Old Online physical backup and RMAN method physical backup?
I know that oracle backup timing depends on many factors. But again it is a bookish answer. In my original post I wanted to know 'which factors'?
I also requested to give me some thumb rules how backup can be fast.
I recently joined a new organisation where the database size are huge. But I would have to create some emergency 'Change Requests' on Oracle backups. Discussing with Old DBAs and prior testing in test environments with same volume of data as in production is not possible at this point of time.
Looking for good contribution from the members

How to set IIS for Applet making it can run at any IE client.

I made an applet with java. It works fine under JDK.
After that, I made a web page with the applet embedded in.
But it can only run on those client computers if the computers has installed JDK.
Could you tell me how to set IIS so that my applet can run on all the client computers no matter whether they have JDK installed or not?

It would have nothing to do with IIS. Your applet apparently requires a "newer" version of Java than what comes with the browser by default. So either make your applet comply with the lowest common denominator (no Swing classes, only AWT, for example), or require your clients to install the newer Java plugin.

Scheduling wake up from sleep - how-to? and best time for cron and backup?

Background (or you can skip straight to question below): We use Retrospect to backup a number of machines over a network. We usually log the machines off and let the screens go to sleep however I'd prefer to log them out and then let the whole machine go to sleep and have them wake up for cron maintenance and backup.
One problem is I can't get Retrospect to wake the machines up, even if I have "Wake up for Ethernet network adminstrator access" checked in the Energy Saver Preference Pane, so I've scheduled the machines (under the Energy Saver Preference Pane) to "Start up or wake up" Every Day just before the backup starts (11:30 pm). (Note: the "Weekdays" option doesn't seem to work under 10.4.3).
So here's my question: what's a better time to have them wake up with regard to cron maintenance (considering they're currently set to go to sleep after 1 1/2 hours, which I'd rather make 1/2 an hour), and does it make any difference if I run the backup before, during or after cron maintenance?

Hello again Christiaan,
IMO, do not take this nightly automatic maintenance into account as it should not, and does not, influence your work and habits.
--> Since 10.4.2 the nightly tasks run automatically anyway (delayed), even if your computer was asleep at the default scheduled times. A very good enhancement, that would be perfect if only we could leave our computers ALWAYS on without restarting ever.
Still no automation if shut down at night neither.
Your question:
In Panther the answer is simple: Wake up at 3:10AM and back to sleep at 5:40AM (because the default maintenance times are 3:15am every day (daily task), 4:30am on Saturdays (weekly task), and 5:30am on the first day of each month (monthly task)).
In Tiger, the default times are the same (except the weekly task at 3:15 instead of 4:30), but they get delayed by the amount of time you slept your computer since the last reboot,
so,
--> you can never know when the maintenance will run, unless your computer NEVER sleeps.
Not a problem, because it is designed to run in the background, while your computer works (with Retrospect for example).
Just run this maintenance yourself manually once a month to make sure it's done. Once or twice a month is enough.
Use one of the "cache-cleaning" utilities or paste this command in Terminal:
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
Post back if you have more questions.
Good luck!
Axl

HT201250 must I keep the computer on all the time for time machine to do back ups

Must I keep my computer on at all times to get the time machine to do updates ? If not how do I go about updateing time machine on a regular basis

It depends on how much backing up you want. Time Machine will do backups if you have it turned on (in Time Machine Preferences), and if you have your computer connected to a backup drive (either wired or wirelessly, like a Time Capsule), that is specified in TM Preferences, and is also turned on. So, for example, I keep my two macs turned on all the time, and I keep Time Machine turned off. When I am not using my macs they sleep. I have external USB drives for backup via Time Machine, but I don't keep them on and connected all the time. When I think of it, which is about once a week, I'll hook them up, power them on, and do a manual backup: I turn Time Machine on and tell it to backup. When I have more critical documents, I keep them backed up on Dropbox, or iCloud, so I know that every time I finish using them and close them they are backed up. If you want to have more complete backups, then you would keep your computer always connected to your backup drives, and the drives would always be powered on and time machine would always be turned on. You could either have all of these turned on all the time, or just when you are using them and power them all down when you are not using them, or have them powered on all the time, but set the computer to sleep when you are not using it. It just depends on what you are comfortable with in terms of backups.

Setting time for Time Machine backup to run

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