Running TimeMachine once per day reduces its ability to recover from accidental deletions and changes, a major feature of that program. If you just want daily backups consider getting CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper! which can be scheduled to clone the drive at the end of the day.
...
Often I get a slowdown (even on an iMac 27 3.4 2011) beach ball when time machine runs to an external firewire disk (may be backing a movie download from itunes)
..
You sure it's TM that's the source of your slowdown? I have the same iMac with a GoFlex FW drive attached and never experience any slowdown when TM runs. And at times it's backing up 50GB+
My Time Machine seems to backup every hour, every day, then every week. What happened to the backups prior to a week ago? I have not changed any of the settings, but in trying to find an issue of a month ago is no longer possible. Any idea what has occurred. I have a 500 GB HDD as the backup destination.
Bob![]()