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Question

OS Lion and Time Machine

Nov 20, 2011 3:53AM PST

OS Lion Time Machine options in the System Preferences does no longer allow choice of back-up time interval but calls for back-up every hour.
Does anyone know how to change it to a schedule of say once a week?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Time Machine Backup Interval
Nov 20, 2011 4:51AM PST

The Time Machine backup interval has always been set at hourly intervals. This is the case under OSX Lion and previous OSX versions. I don't pretend to know why Apple has not offered options other than hourly.

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Time Machine Backup Interval
Nov 20, 2011 6:08AM PST

Can you pls suggest some third party software which offers backup schedule options?
thanks

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Time Machine Interval software
Nov 20, 2011 10:03AM PST

Try MacUpdate for these two:

TimeMachineEditor

TimeMachineScheduler

I have not used any software to change the Time Machine interval. I am simply aware that it exists.

regards,
centurion48

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Answer
Considering
Nov 20, 2011 11:18AM PST

Considering time machine only backs up the files that have changed since the last backup, is there some particular reason you want a longer interval? You're just going to be trading a series of minor disruptions from Time Machine kicking into action for a much larger singular disruption.

Also, a little food for thought. In my own experience there have been a couple of times where I get to doing a few too many things at once, become a little careless, and delete a bunch of files I wanted to keep. Fortunately I was able to resurrect them via Time Machine and didn't have to painstakingly recreate them.

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Time Machine on OS X Lion
Nov 20, 2011 4:32PM PST

My son gave me the suggestion to perform "repair disk permissions" under disk utility for the Mac HD.
Since then Time Machine runs very fast and there is no longer need to change back-up schedule.
One important point: exclude from back-up the application FUSION or Parallel because they are not back-up incrementally but fully each time.

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The reason for that is because those two applications
Nov 20, 2011 10:49PM PST

create a single, large, file as the virtual hard drive.