Mac Tricks And Tips » Time Machine

Mac Cheat Sheet

admin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:57:05 +0000

Hey

Just a simple post today, but one you shouldn’t take light heatedly. Anyone who ever has a Mac will know that you generate a long list of passwords and other pieces of information when you install or upgrade the operating system. The problem with this is that you usually end up with a sheet of paper that doesn’t make much sense a couple of months later. This is were your Mac Cheat Sheet comes in.

You can find this cheat sheet online at Apple’s Website, the file is located here. I recommend you fill out this sheet and hide it. It is designed to be used when you going into a Genius Bar, but it serves as a good reminder.

Some of the options on the sheet are a little simple, but I would pay particular attention to the Account section. This contains the main passwords you would usually forget.

It is simple, but it does serve as a good reminder. When you have completed, remember to put it in a safe place. I recommend you put it in the box your Mac came in.

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Reducing Time Machine Disk Space

admin — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:25:06 +0000

Hey

I like Time Machine, for my needs it is perfect. The problem is that disk space isn’t unlimited as a result you may run out. This post will be showing you how you can save those little bits of space so you can get the most out of your backups. Although it will normally delete backups that you don’t need you will eventually run out of space.

Areas such as /var/tmp, /var/vm and Library/caches are normally not included, these are temporary areas that are really not needed in a backup. You can add more to this list. For example if you go to System Preferences > Time Machine > Options you can add more areas.

The first areas I would recommend you to add is the Developer area. If you have installed the XCode package this is about 3Gb of space which you can save. This folder hardly ever changes. The files are stored on your hard disk anyway.

One of the best areas to exclude is System folders. If you select System from the root of you disk, you will be given an option to exclude either the System Folder or every system folder. This can be a massive saving. For example it will exclude all of those .DS_Store files and every other system file that isn’t really needed by a backup. On my disk it saved 15Gb, which is a massive amount which will always grow.

The final disk folder that is a recommended to be add to the exclude list if your downloads folder. Usually the downloads folder is a temporary storage area for files and folder, as a result it should be excluded from a Time Machine backup. You can have a real saving over time, take example all of those 50mb files you downloaded over an evening, they slowly add up.

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Start Time Machine Backups From Terminal

admin — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:39:14 +0000

Hey

This is only a quick tip today since I am not feeling to great. If you have ever used Time Machine you can start a backup using the menu bar command. But that is a boring command way of doing things. We like playing with Terminal don’t we. As a result you can easily start a Time Backup with the following in Terminal:

/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/backupd-helper -auto

It is a really pointless little command since it is quicker to use the menu bar option. But if you have been playing around with the Terminal customization post I wrote earlier in the week you may want to add the command as an alias.

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Edit Time Machine’s Backup Intervals

admin — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:38:11 +0000

Hey

I love using Time Machine as a backup tool. Although I do still do monthly backups, as a quick way of recovering old files nothing can beat it. Time Machine, by default, is set to backup every single hour. This can for some people be a problem. You may have a Mac which you are using for production use, the extra CPU and disk usage could be detrimental to your work. As well as this, may be you only want Time Machine to back up once or twice a day, to keep back up disk usage down. On the face of it there isn’t a very easy way to do this. But a cool little program called TimeMachineEditor can do this all for you.

Once as you download the program (which has a very cool icon, I think) and install it, you will be presented with the following screen. This is one of two screens which can enable you to change the backup time. For example in this screen you could tell Time Machine to back up every two hours, or every 0.5. Depending on what you feel would be best for your computer. If also has two options which you can change depending on your preferences.

Probably one of the more powerful options is using the calendar function. This can be activated by selecting calendar from the drop down. This screen enables you to specifiy the exact time in which an update can be done. For example you could do it on the first of every month. A better use of this would be to set it to backup at 9am, 1pm and 5pm. So it can backup when you start and finish work and when you are having lunch.

When you hit apply the changes will take effect. It will then edit a system preference file. This system file is the one Time Machine will use to determine when it will next back up. As a result the user interface will not display the correct time. This is because the user interface isn’t designed to work with times that are not planned into the program. These problems can be ignored. One tip, if you decide you are going to not use this program any more and you are going to uninstall it, revert the settings back to normal, this can be done through Settings > Show Default Settings in the menu bar.

This program is good. It is well designed, does exactly what it says on the tin and nothing more. From a consumer standpoint there is really nothing more that could make this program any more useful. You can download it for free off the website.

P.S. Sorry for the no post yesterday. The mind was blank, and a lot of otherwork decided it was more important.

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View What Time Machine Backs Up

admin — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:07:31 +0000

Hey

Time Machine is great for the average consumer of Mac’s. You don’t need to think about backing up files it just does it for you. But sometimes you have to wonder, what exactly does Time Machine backup? Some times, when I haven’t do a lot file creating, it backups around 2Gb of files. Some clever person has created a small perl application that scans your Time Machine backup for changes and displays them in Terminal.

The firs step is to download the timedog app. Its a small executable. Unzip the executable.

[download id="5"]

Next open up Terminal. We are going to move the executable so it can be activated from any folder and you don’t have to write the path every time. In Terminal type

cd ~/downloads sudo cp timedog /usr/local/bin

This will change the directory to your downloads folder, you will have to change this if you have a different downloads folder. It will then copy it into you local binary folder. This is a system protected area as a result you have to use you admin password to copy across the file. You can delete the timedog file in your downloads file when you have finished all of the steps.

The next step is to change Terminal to you Time Machine folder. In Terminal again type:

cd /Volumes/Time\ Machine/Backups.backupdb/[Computer Name]

You have to cross check the path correctly in Finder. The backslah (\) escapes any spaces. For example if you computer name has a couple of spaces in it or you Time Machine disk isn’t called “Time Machine”, you should use backslashes to escape them properly.

The final step is to invoke timedog, simply type the following:

timedog -d 5 -l

The -d option is the depth of files. If you have millions of files to backup you may find the Terminal output gets long. This cuts it down to only 5 folders deep. The -l modifier is linked to symbolic links that Time Machine creates. I would keep this option to to display the best output.

A simple little script. It looks clean from what I have seen although caution should be taken. It is interesting what Time Machine exactly backs up.

Via: Mac OS X Hints

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Email Backup Pro

admin — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:26:44 +0000

Hey

Every day MacUpdate release a new piece of software at a discounted price. For a while I have wanted to talk about some of the software that has come up, but a decent one has never turned up till today. Email Backup Pro, is ones of those pieces of software that is really cheap and really good. A combination that never seems to appear on the internet.

As it says on the tin, Email Backup Pro, is designed to backup your email. It is really simple and focused, it doesn’t contain any extra bits that get in the way of the core of the program. You select you email client, there are quite a few on the list so it seems most are supported. The destination can be any location you want on your disk, or an external drive. Then you set all of the backup settings, such as time, frequency and the extra settings such as backing up address contacts.

You then press save and let it run. I’m not sure if you can close the application or keep it open, since the trial only lets you run it manually. You have to make sure that you save the settings before you allow it run, otherwise it may not run properly.

As with most back up software, you need to restore the backups. All backups are stored in a compressed .ebp format. The built in backup manager lets you view previous backups and quickly restore them.

This sort of software isn’t like Time Machine and is not a pick and choose email backup. It is designed as an off site system, to backup every single email you have. A more “professional” solution. Its very useful for people who have a lot of sensitive email that they want backup and don’t have the advantage of storing it on a web server. It is currently priced on MacUpdate at $5.95 from $9.95. Which is a real bargin.

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Easily Access Time Machine In Finder

admin — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:41:00 +0000

Hey

Time Machine is a great little tool for backing up files and folders. Although it is not the most powerful backup tool in the world it is certainly good for the average user. The problem with this is that it is in not in the most useful place to use, that is the dock. Thankfully there is a way to make this easier.

If you find Time Machine within the Applications folder and drag it onto the Finder toolbar you can access it any time you want and it will take you directly to the Finder window you are working in.

If you are a little confused by the process you can watch this cleverly put together video by Philip Havens (who would have had a link to his site if he gave me one). He shows this process in more detail and how to use it.

Simple to use and simple to set up. You can now hopefully get to Time Machine quicker when you find that all important file has disappeared.

Edit: RSS readers you are either going to have to click through to this site to view the video or view it on Vimeo here.

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Warning On Unsupported Time Machine Disks

admin — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:18:00 +0000

Hey

I wanted to mention this tip as a warning to anyone who is using Time Machine on an supported drive. You may face problems and as a result lose your backups. This can be quite serious and as a result you need to take some caution.

The problem is down to using the Terminal hack to enable Time Machine to backup onto disks that are not normally supported. These include NAS Servers and possibly other computers. I am not 100% what unsupported means, there not what is recommended. The hack is done through Terminal using this line.

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

It works great initially but problems on my machine have arose. For example one day Time Machine randomly stopped working, due to write errors. The disk is perfectly fine. Time Machine has just thrown the towel in.

As a result I have lost a large set of Time Machine backups which are unusable. Although TM isn’t designed to be used as a serious backup tool, it was good for my needs. As a word of warning to anyone using the unsupported hack be careful how you tread, it may suddenly stop working.

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Increasing Time Machine Backup Interval

admin — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 09:59:00 +0000

Hey

If you are not using Time Machine you should. It so easy to use and simple to set up. Anyway I have found that my Time Machine could backup more frequently. The default time is one hour. In an hour I can create change and delete a lot of file that wouldn’t be backed up. You can change the backup time value and it is easy to do. There are two ways to do this, through Terminal or the good old manual way. They do the same thing.

If you want to do it the manual way navigate to System/Libary/LaunchDaemons from here find com.apple.backup-auto.plist. This is the time machine backup file. Open this in text edit and find StartInterval there is a number in the integer value. The default for this is 3600. This is the value you change.

If you want to change it to 30 minutes backup change the value to 1800. To work out when you want it to update times 60 (seconds) by the number of minutes you want it to backup. Don’t enter it to low otherwise you could slow your system right down.

If you want to use the terminal more automatic way open up terminal.app and enter the following.

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 1800

It does the same thing except it is easier to do and you don’t need to be editing files directly.

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Enable Time Machine On Unupported Drives

admin — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:36:00 +0000

Hey

In the new release of Mac OS X Leopard, Apple added a really cool program called Time Machine. Time machine was an automatic program that enabled you to back up your entire hard drive without you doing anything. This was great there was no need for manual backups. All you needed was a drive attached to your computer. But here lies a problem. Time Machine only works with drives that are supported. As a result network drives are no goes. But some clever sod, has found a way around this using a simple terminal command that allows you to use a network drive, also know as an unsupported drive.

To enable this option type the following into Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal)

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

You should now be able to access any drives on your network, such as a NAS (Network Attached Storage), as shown in the image below, the NAS drive by the way is the middle option.

Please remember that it is unsupported. So there could be bugs that might just wipe your entire backup. Use caution to see what happens. But as it stands it is great if you need a quick place to update. You do need a LAN connection, otherwise the backup could take a long time.

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