timed TM backup

[4now]

Is there a way to set Time machine to backup only once - at a specific time

 

[soberbrain]

Closest thing I've seen is to customize from 1 hour to 12 hour between backups.

TimeMachineScheduler

 

[ChrisA]

Is there a way to set Time machine to backup only once - at a specific time

Yes, TM can backup at any interval you want, so long as what you want is a one hour interval.

But seriously what's the point of a longer backup interval? It does not take up more space as only the files that changed get copied and if none changed, none are copied. Space gets recovered as the disk filles by delelting old hourly backups and old daily backups.

 

[Halcyon]

Two things:

1.- TimeMachineScheduler totally messed up my backups. It wouldn't backup and when I uninstalled it TimeMachine wouldn't recognize the HD where the backup's where being performed. After more than two hours of fiddling around with settings, options and restarts, I managed to get it to work again with TimeMachine. Maybe it's just not compatible with 10.5.4.

2.- Yes, I think it would be nice to be able to backup at user setting intervals instead of the fixed one hour ones. One of my machines wakes up automatically and back's up, while the other won't wake up to back up and will backup every time I wake it up (providing it has been asleep for more than an hour). Small issue, but if you add to that the backup's fail once in a while and once failed it won't backup again till a manual intervention from my part...it's easy to see why it would be nice to set longer backup time intervals.

My 2 cents.

 

[4now]

i'm asking because Retrospect is a nightmare

As if it wasn't already difficult to configure - it has also suddenly stopped - without reason

And what good is a backup system if it that challenging

also - my client is working with large photos - and regular backups would slow down their system ( I assume )