Change backup frequency of Time Machine?

[Shpigford]

Does anyone know of a way to change the frequency of Time Machine's backups? I'd like to change it to something like maybe every 6 hours instead of every hour as CPU usage can get pretty burly during the 20+ minutes it takes to do the backups.

[divigation]

If you think Time Machine backs up too often (or not often enough) for your liking, navigate into /System » Library » LaunchDaemons. There you'll find a file named com.apple.backupd-auto.plist. Open it in your favorite text editor, and look for this section:
<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>3600</integer>
Change the 3600 number to some other time interval in seconds, and you'll have changed Time Machine's backup interval.

Courtesy of MacOSXHints.

[Raven]

Sweet! Thanks, divigation!

[divigation]

The first thing I wanted to tweak in Leopard, it would take a serious amount of horrible luck for me to be thankful that TM was backing up on the hour.

[Shpigford]

Booyah. Exactly what I needed.

[mathcornish]

I am also wanting to change the frequency of TM but when I get to here:
<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>3600</integer>
in LaunchDaemons, it wont let me save the new timings. Instead, it saves within a new folder with my new timings but the original is still showing as 3600? Help...

[Raven]

@mathcornish - Try copying the entire contents of the plist into a new text file on your desktop. Make the changes, give it the same name as the old one, and drop it directly into the folder. You'll need an admin password to overwrite.

[Yuiichi]

@mathcornish - just to add on to Raven's advice (which is good, btw), I would also make a copy of the original file, just in case you run into any problems! Just copy it to another directory and maybe give it a new name, just so the system doesn't confuse it with something it needs. What kind of new name? Probably the same thing with a number at the end would suffice.

Hope this helps!

[donniev]

Originally Posted by divigation

If you think Time Machine backs up too often (or not often enough) for your liking, navigate into /System » Library » LaunchDaemons. There you'll find a file named com.apple.backupd-auto.plist. Open it in your favorite text editor, and look for this section:
<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>3600</integer>
Change the 3600 number to some other time interval in seconds, and you'll have changed Time Machine's backup interval.

Courtesy of MacOSXHints.

You can also open it with the pList editor and change it that way.

[g3p]

Alternatively, you can use:
sudo vi /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto.plist

to edit the file...