Time Machine--"Next backup: When Mac is plugged in"

My wife and I have identical MacBook Airs (2011) with Mavericks. For whatever reason my wife's Time Machine will not back up until it is plugged in to an electrical outlet. When I open Time Machine Preferences, it will say, "Next backup: <future time>". When I unplug her Mac Air from the electrical outlet, it changes to, "Next backup: When your Mac is plugged in". The concern is that the Mac Air is used unplugged all the time, and when it is plugged in she closes the lid. All I need is for her to restore some work that is from two days ago.
I can not find anything in Preferences that controls that function. I reset SMC and did a reset of Time Machine using Pondini's instructions, http://pondini.org/TM/A4.html
So why is it doing this?
My MacBook Air does not act this way. It backs up on the hour plugged or unplugged.
A search on the forum turned up a handful of posts from 2008 with this question.
Everyone have a nice day.

There is a setting in Time Machine in System Preferences. It is under the options button to "Backup while on battery power". Check that.

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Can I use a 2tb external drive with Time Machine to backup my Mac Mini (256gbSSD + 2tbHDD)?

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Would an external 2tb My Passport Drive by Western Digital work for the backup?
It seems like it would not work because the total storage on the Mac Mini is 2304 gigabytes (SSD + HDD).
And the external Western Digital drive is only 2048 in gigabytes versus 2304 gigabytes the Mac Mini has.

No. A Time Machine backup drive should have at least twice the capacity of the drive it backs up. You would need at least a 4 TB backup drive for Time Machine.
Might I suggest as an alternative that you not use Time Machine but a third-party backup utility that simply overwrites older files with new ones such that the backup drive can be the same capacity as the drive backed up.
Suggested Backup Software
1. Carbon Copy Cloner
2. Get Backup
3. Deja Vu
4. SuperDuper!
5. Synk Pro
6. Tri-Backup
Others may be found at MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.

Time machine only backup when i am using mac

i have a time capsule and a wd external drive connected to IMac for backups. time capsule only backs up when i am using computer or if i click the time machine icon. is this correct? i thought it would backup automatically every hour.

Time Machine will back up every hour as long as your Mac is active and you have made any changes in the last hour.
If a change has not occurred on your Mac, there is really no reason for Time Machine to back that up.

Time Machine dumping backups when it shouldn't!

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Z

zutty wrote:
Hmm...OK let me see if I've got this right....My initial TM backup was on May 17 at 2AM...So seeing as it's been more than 24 hours...It will begin to delete some..or all..of the preceeding hourly backups?
Yes. Only one will be kept. The rest will be deleted.
Also, it is still scheduling backups every hour...When does it start to schedule daily?
TM will continue to schedule backups every hour as long as TM is turned on. TM doesn't "schedule" daily backups. After one day has passed, TM deletes all of the hourly backups except one. That one becomes the daily. Daily backups are kept for 30 days. After then, only one out of the oldest 7 dailies is kept. The others are deleted. The one that is kept becomes your "weekly" backup. Weekly backups don't get deleted until your TM drive fills up. Then they are purged to make room for your new hourly backups.
The last couple of backups had no deletions, but the one before that after it was asleep, it deleted 3 of them.Making it 15 kept I guess I just don't really understad how TM is supposed to work.
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Time Machine - "Next backup"

I have edited "com.apple.backupd-auto" and increased the StartInterval to 21600, in order to have Time Machine backup every 6 hours.
What file must be edited in order to see the time for the "Next backup" displayed correctly (ie. Latest backup time + 6 hours)?
NB: I do not wish to use TimeMachineEditor to control backups.
Thanks,
PM

TM's backup schedule cannot be changed by the user, at least not as it's currently designed. If you are backing up to an external drive which is no longer connected, then the next backup will occur when the drive is re-connected.
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Using time machine to backup my mac to external harddrive as well as backing up a second seperate harddrive to another external hard drive???

Hey Guys, i currently have time machine backing up everything on my 2011 imac to an external harddrive, which is working fine! No problems there.
As a photographer, i currently have two seperate harddrives. Harddrive (A) - All projects/files, & Harddrive (B) - Backup of Harddrive (A) with all projects/files.
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Is this possible to do??
Hope you understood what i meant easily! haha
Cheers
Leslie

Sorry Leslie but time machine cant do what you are asking for, however there are free apps like backuplist+ that can sync Harddrive to Harddrive, the app can be found here

I bought an external hard drive for backups to use with Time Machine, but however when I try to connect it with the other windows laptop it doesn't work ? intact it doesn't work on any other device except my MAC ?

I bought an external hard drive for backups to use with Time Machine, but however when I try to connect it with the other windows laptop it doesn't work ? intact it doesn't work on any other device except my MAC ?

Do not worry about it.
Time Machine needs that your external drive is formatted in HFS+, or better known as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". This filesystem is used by Apple on Macs and Windows cannot read or write drives formatted with this filesystem, being this the reason why all your devices do not read the external drive except your Mac.
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Solved the problem by clicking the gray triangle next to "On My Mac" and drilled down!

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First thing to do is go to the Pondini tips page, then follow the link to his full TM site for all the details.

Does Time Machine bundle backup sets when it deletes a month's daily sets?

I'm asking this question to find out if I can delete the all but the last week in a month, each month, in order to extend the useful capacity of my backup drive.
In some backup systems, a periodic "bundle" is made when previous sets are deleted, so for instance, the last backup of the month has the cumulative hourly changes of that month. In this way, transient files which appear and disappear within the month are retained in the monthly backup.
Is this true of Time Machine? Exactly what does Time Machine do? Does it simply wipe out the daily sets and chose the last one to be the "weekly backup?" Or something more sophisticated and useful?
Thanks for any insight!

I've devised a little experiment to discover Time Machine's behavior in this regard:
On my Time Machine's backup schedule, August 27 corresponds with the end of a week. So, on August 26 at 9:15AM, I created the following [folder]/file structure:
[Time Machine Test -Transient Roll-up]
   [Time Machine Test - 1. Hourly Transience
      A one hour lifetime file.rtf
   [Time Machine Test - 2. Daily Transience
      A one day lifetime file.rtf
   [Time Machine Test - 3. Weekly Transience
      A one week lifetime file.rtf
At 10:10AM of that day I removed
[Time Machine Test - 1. Hourly Transience
      A one hour lifetime file.rtf
At 10:10 the next day, August 27, I removed
   [Time Machine Test - 2. Daily Transience
      A one day lifetime file.rtf
On August 28 at 10:30AM, acheck today of the earliest backup of this structure reveals only the following:
[Time Machine Test -Transient Roll-up]
   [Time Machine Test - 3. Weekly Transience
      A one week lifetime file.rtf
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Hope this is useful. It certainly is to me.

Time Machine works, but when disconnected keeps saying "Could not complete backup"

Running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on a late '08 MBP: While connected to my work's external 1TB drive, TM operates as expected. Every day I disconnect and take it home. Without the TM drive available, every so often I get "TM could not complete the backup."
Suspecting a glitchy .plist, I moved com.apple.timemachine to my desktop and hit "Back Up Now." Evidently now the new plist doesn't recognize the >600GB of TM data logged, as, of course, it shows no previous backups (image attached). I feared that proceeding would mean it would begin an entirely NEW routine—rendering my existing TM useless. So I stopped, replaced the previous plist, and (whew) again TM shows my history.
So it's not a critical issue, but a regular annoyance: why does TM now think it has to tell me every time it didn't work? This started up maybe a week or two ago, and I don't recall any system modifications. I see nothing in the TM prefs that would trigger this.
Any ideas? Thanks.

+1
Same issue on Mountain Lion 10.8.5. Extremely annoying to get this dialog box over and over throughout the day.
Time Machine preferences shows "Next backup: When disk is connected". So why doesn't it simply wait until a disk is connected and only alert me then if there is a failure?
OP - did you ever solve this issue?
Thanks,
Lance

HT201250 I have two external hard drives. One is my Time Machine backup drive. The other I use for external storage of files (documents, photos, movies, etc). Can I set Time Machine to backup BOTH my Mac hard drive and my other external hard drive?

I have two external hard drives. One is my Time Machine backup drive. The other I use for external storage of files (documents, photos, movies, etc). Can I set Time Machine to backup BOTH my Mac hard drive and my other external hard drive?

Yes you can make multiple backups on one hard drive, for example if you’ve 1TB hard drive installed in your PC and you’ve two Mac Machines with 500GB drive each then you just make two backup images with size of 500GB each.
http://www.halfspot.com/use-your-pc-hard-drive-for-time-machine-backup/

My mac can't connect to my time machine for backup

My mac wont connect to the time capule for backup - any ideas why this may happen and how to fix?

Hello stianlo
There are a few things that you can try that are located in the articles below to get you backing up again.
Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3275
AirPort Time Capsule: Time Machine backups may not mount; "Backup volume cannot be found" may appear
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1170
Regards,
-Norm G.

I got this error while my mac was backing up to time machine: he backup disk image "/Volumes/Data/Sanjeev's iMac.sparsebundle" could not be created (error (null)). Please could someone help

I got this error while my mac was backing up to time machine: he backup disk image “/Volumes/Data/Sanjeev’s iMac.sparsebundle” could not be created (error (null)). Please could someone help

Has the backup been working ok??
If that is the case simply reboot the TC.. or if that fails, reboot the whole network, restarting in correct order..
modem.. wait 2min
TC.. wait 2min

Time Machine: Repeated errors when backing up for the first time using a new external firewire drive

My Iomega 500GB firewire external drive failed on me last week and I have just replaced it with an identical model. I used to use the old drive with Time Machine on my MacBook Pro running 10.5.8 with no issues, until the drive had a hardware failure and stopped spinning up, hence the replacement.
Two days ago I tried using Time Machine for the first time with the replacement external drive. The backup failed and each subsequent backup attempt has failed since then with a different error each time. The drive cannot be ejected using Finder (Finder says disk is in use and cannot be ejected even when no processes are running except for Finder and Time Machine has been disabled), by dragging it to the dock (hangs computer which can only be fixed by a hard reboot), in Disk Utilities (drive cannot be unmounted) or in Terminal ("no such file or directory").
The first backup attempt failed after 3 hours of "preparing" with the message "The backup was not performed because an error occured while creating backup directory".
I tried repairing the disk in Disk Utilities and Disk Utilities said the drive was OK ("the volume Time Machine Backups appears to be OK"). I tried ejecting the drive (hard reboot of computer and disconnecting the drive), plugging it back in again and trying again.
This time it started backing up, then failed after a few minutes with the message "an error occured while copying files to the backup volume". I had a look at the troubleshooting suggested on http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/C3.html and followed instructions. It failed again, so I did a full reset as per http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/A4.html.
It failed again, so I tried reparing the drive again in Disk Utilities and again it said it was OK. I tried using different cables and ports (Firewire 400 instead of Firewire 800), and backups still fail.
I have turned off anti-virus scanning (Sophos). I have tried excluding it from Spotlight but this causes an error message from Spotlight. I have tried trashing the com.apple.TimeMachine.plist file and rebooting. I have tried selecting deselecting the drive as the back up in Time Machine preferences, selecting "None", then "Stop Backing Up" then quitting preferences, rebooting, disconnecting the drive, reconnecting the drive and selecting the drive again as the backup disk in Time Machine preferences. I have tried erasing the drive completely, rebooting, and trying to back up again.
None of these have worked. This is a brand new drive and I do not want to have to replace it again if I do not have to.
Does anyone have any suggestions? Thank you.

Hello, some possible clues...
Should you click “Start New Backup”? Not yet! If you see the dialog above, your existing Time Machine backup is corrupt, and you might not be able to recover data from it. But you can save a copy of the corrupt bundle and, perhaps, extract some data from it if needed.
Ask yourself if Time Machine has saved data you might need before deciding what to do next:
If you are sure you won’t need anything backed up before today, click “Start New Backup” and let Time Machine do its thing.
Otherwise, click “Back Up Later” and save a copy before letting Time Machine start a new backup. Just look for a file called “computername.sparsebundle” (for network backups) or “Backups.backupdb” (for local ones) and create a copy with a different name. You can open sparsebundle files with DiskImageMounter and browse them like any other disk. More information is available here.
There you go. If you click “Start New Backup” when you see this dialog box, Time Machine will erase all of your old backup data and start a new bundle. It won’t be corrupt, but it will be empty.
Note that you can manually initiate a Time Machine backup integrity check by option-clicking the “Time Machine” icon in the menu bar and selecting “Verify Backups.”
http://blog.fosketts.net/2010/08/11/time-machine-completed-verification-backups- improve-reliability-time-machine-create-backup/
According to This Time Machine resource “This appears only on Snow Leopard, and started with the Time Capsule Backup Update 1.0 in mid-May of 2010. It also seems to have been included in the 10.6.3 v1.1 update and 10.6.4.”
So, what can you do about it? Grin and bear it, it seems, until Apple fixes it.
One thing you can do to make the backup take less time is to connect your machine to your Time Capsule or other backup drive via Ethernet for the duration of the initial backup.
http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/the-dreaded-time-machine-has-completed-a-verifi cation-of-your-backups-to-improve-reliability-time-machine-must-create-a-new-ba c kup-for-you-message-and-why-you-are-seeing-it/
Time Machine: About "Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you."...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4076
Or a different/better solution in my experiences...
Get carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of your old HD to the New one...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Or SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
Or the most expensive one & my favorite, Tri-Backup...
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/products/tribackup.html

Time Machine--"Next backup: When Mac is plugged in"

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