Comments on: Changing Time Machine’s backup schedule

By: Scully

Scully — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 21:59:04 +0000

Thanks a lot! This was exactly what I was looking for and extremely helpful!!!

By: Coz The Cat

Coz The Cat — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 02:52:39 +0000

Thank you for the info on this web age. I’m going to try the Editor or Scheduler. I just … it’s aggravating, to me, that there is no real control (in native software) of backup scheduling. I don’t understand the need to backup every hour – and I am at my Mac A LOT. It just seems to make much more sense to run a MANUALLY SCHEDULED backup in the middle of the night, when the Mac is not in use. I love my Macs (three Mac Minis and a 17-inch MacBook Pro) and will always use a Mac, but I have to wonder “What were they thinking?”

Thanks again for the info here.

By: Aram Fingal

Aram Fingal — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 02:17:24 +0000

I tried the default writes solution and it didn’t work at first. No change took effect. Then I checked the actual plist file and found (in the get info window) that its permissions had been changed to be readable only by system. I added read only permission for everyone and then the change took effect.

I wonder if this is what’s going on for some people with the other utilities not working. TimeMachine doesn’t have root level permission to read the preferences file so it can’t make the change.

By: PJD

PJD — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 03:51:46 +0000

Not sure if everyone is still going on this post, but I too tried Time Machine Editor and it works like a dream. I’ve just changed after too many years to Mac from Windows and it’s an interesting adjustment. With Mac everything just works, but there seems to be a trade off in a loss of control. With Windows of course you are forced to control everything because it’s always falling down and you need to learn how to fix it. The other big difference is the “Mac community” – all the people on threads like this who invest their time to help. So from a new convert: Thank you

By: Allan

Allan — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 23:30:18 +0000

Yes, works like a charm. I have it set up to backup every night at 1:00AM.

By: kenny

kenny — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 19:54:26 +0000

Allan,
Did the TM editor work to schedule TM once a day?

By: Allan

Allan — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:29:35 +0000

I find that whenever Time Machine runs it consumes so much of my home network bandwidth that my Vonage calls start stuttering. I downloaded Time Machine Editor and set it for a once a day at 01h00 backup. I’ll see if it works, and report back.

By: abre

abre — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 11:58:05 +0000

Correction to Phototristan’s comment… Lingon can still be downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/lingon/files/
I’m just waiting to see if my next backup happens in 4 hours time

By: kupy

kupy — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 07:26:20 +0000

Nevermind: Time Machine Editor can do it… Supposedly… We’ll see…

By: kupy

kupy — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 07:25:16 +0000

This is cool but what if I want to schedule a specific time, say 1:00am for my Time Machine to backup? Can I run it off some cron job instead of its own scheduler?