Hello,

So I have Time Machine backups on our Mac Studio backing up to our
Synology DiskStation. But now I'm puzzled.

It has the option to back up hourly, daily, or weekly. Hourly is too
much, and daily is too little -- I'd like to back up every 6 hours.

Is there a way to set that up in the gui, or do I need to set up tmutil
jobs in crontab? Or...?

Thanks,

--
-v

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On 2024-12-23 18:29, vallor wrote:

Hello,

So I have Time Machine backups on our Mac Studio backing up to our
Synology DiskStation. But now I'm puzzled.

It has the option to back up hourly, daily, or weekly. Hourly is too
much, and daily is too little -- I'd like to back up every 6 hours.

Is there a way to set that up in the gui, or do I need to set up tmutil
jobs in crontab? Or...?

Thanks,

No.

Time Machine backs up every hour.

What you are looking at is how it culls it's backups.

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On Dec 23, 2024 at 6:29:13 PM PST, "vallor" <vallor@cultnix.org> wrote:

Hello,

So I have Time Machine backups on our Mac Studio backing up to our
Synology DiskStation. But now I'm puzzled.

It has the option to back up hourly, daily, or weekly. Hourly is too
much, and daily is too little -- I'd like to back up every 6 hours.

Is there a way to set that up in the gui, or do I need to set up tmutil
jobs in crontab? Or...?

Thanks,

I use TimeMachineEditor to set my own schedule of when Time Machine runs.

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/26704/timemachineeditor

You turn off the automatic scheduler and set your own using the Editor. It creates a Launch schedule to at specific intervals or on a calendar intervals. I currently take Time Machine backups at 3 hour intervals throughout the day.

The initial thought for the built-in schedule is that TM would run hourly during "normal working hours", then infrequently after hours. Backups older than 24 hours are consolidated to a single backup. Backups older than 3 months are consolidated to weekly backups.

Apple has articles on how it runs on their site and this article goes into
more detail. Howard also has utilities to check Time Machine.

https://eclecticlight.co/2023/03/01/how-does-time-machine-make-a-backup/
--
DeeDee, don't press that button! DeeDee! NO! Dee...

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On 24.12.24 03:29, vallor wrote:

It has the option to back up hourly, daily, or weekly. Hourly is too
much, and daily is too little -- I'd like to back up every 6 hours.

Keep the HD plugged and it does not matter. The amount of data remains
the same. Hourly is a very reasonable period.

--
"Roma locuta, causa finita." (Augustinus)

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On Mon, 23 Dec 2024 22:39:27 -0800, Alan <nuh-uh@nope.com> wrote in <vkdkuv$1n1v8$1@dont-email.me>:

On 2024-12-23 18:29, vallor wrote:

Hello,

So I have Time Machine backups on our Mac Studio backing up to our
Synology DiskStation. But now I'm puzzled.

It has the option to back up hourly, daily, or weekly. Hourly is too
much, and daily is too little -- I'd like to back up every 6 hours.

Is there a way to set that up in the gui, or do I need to set up tmutil
jobs in crontab? Or...?

Thanks,

No.

Time Machine backs up every hour.

What you are looking at is how it culls it's backups.

Unless I'm mistaken, that turns out not to be the case. If you
look under "options" in System > General > Time Machine, you'll
see four options for frequency of backup: Manual, Hourly, Daily, Weekly.

I set it to "Manual", then used TME to set backups for every 6 hours.

--
-v

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Tue, 24 Dec 2024 08:19:04 GMT, Percival John Hackworth
<pjh@nanoworks.com> wrote in <Y7uaP.52234$Uup4.3003@fx10.iad>:

On Dec 23, 2024 at 6:29:13 PM PST, "vallor" <vallor@cultnix.org> wrote:

Hello,

So I have Time Machine backups on our Mac Studio backing up to our
Synology DiskStation. But now I'm puzzled.

It has the option to back up hourly, daily, or weekly. Hourly is too
much, and daily is too little -- I'd like to back up every 6 hours.

Is there a way to set that up in the gui, or do I need to set up tmutil
jobs in crontab? Or...?

Thanks,

I use TimeMachineEditor to set my own schedule of when Time Machine
runs.

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/26704/timemachineeditor

You turn off the automatic scheduler and set your own using the Editor.
It creates a Launch schedule to at specific intervals or on a calendar intervals.
I currently take Time Machine backups at 3 hour intervals throughout the
day.

The initial thought for the built-in schedule is that TM would run
hourly during "normal working hours", then infrequently after hours.
Backups older than 24 hours are consolidated to a single backup. Backups older than 3 months are consolidated to weekly backups.

Apple has articles on how it runs on their site and this article goes
into more detail. Howard also has utilities to check Time Machine.

https://eclecticlight.co/2023/03/01/how-does-time-machine-make-a-backup/

Thank you very much. No trouble installing and setting up TME, once I got
past the annoying ads on macupdate.com. (Among other things, it tried
to get me to install Avast -- are you kidding me? ;)

--
-v

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 2024-12-24, vallor <vallor@cultnix.org> wrote:

Hello,

So I have Time Machine backups on our Mac Studio backing up to our
Synology DiskStation. But now I'm puzzled.

It has the option to back up hourly, daily, or weekly. Hourly is too
much, and daily is too little -- I'd like to back up every 6 hours.

Hourly isn't too much. 🤣 Hourly backups let you undelete files you just deleted, or roll back to a version of the file you modified. And an hourly frequency means incremental backup will be smaller and faster. So I
really have to wonder what makes you claim they are "too much"...

--
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 2024-12-24, vallor <vallor@cultnix.org> wrote:

Thank you very much. No trouble installing and setting up TME, once I got past the annoying ads on macupdate.com. (Among other things, it tried
to get me to install Avast -- are you kidding me? ;)

It never ceases to amaze me how many people are just bumbling around the
web with no ad blocker... Bunch of masochists!

--
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 2024-12-24 10:02, Jolly Roger wrote:

On 2024-12-24, vallor <vallor@cultnix.org> wrote:

Hello,

So I have Time Machine backups on our Mac Studio backing up to our
Synology DiskStation. But now I'm puzzled.

It has the option to back up hourly, daily, or weekly. Hourly is too
much, and daily is too little -- I'd like to back up every 6 hours.

Hourly isn't too much. 🤣 Hourly backups let you undelete files you just deleted, or roll back to a version of the file you modified. And an hourly frequency means incremental backup will be smaller and faster. So I
really have to wonder what makes you claim they are "too much"...

Especially when you realize that it does do backup culling to avoid
using TOO much storage.

:-)

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On 2024-12-24 06:53, vallor wrote:

On Mon, 23 Dec 2024 22:39:27 -0800, Alan <nuh-uh@nope.com> wrote in <vkdkuv$1n1v8$1@dont-email.me>:

On 2024-12-23 18:29, vallor wrote:

Hello,

So I have Time Machine backups on our Mac Studio backing up to our
Synology DiskStation. But now I'm puzzled.

It has the option to back up hourly, daily, or weekly. Hourly is too
much, and daily is too little -- I'd like to back up every 6 hours.

Is there a way to set that up in the gui, or do I need to set up tmutil
jobs in crontab? Or...?

Thanks,

No.

Time Machine backs up every hour.

What you are looking at is how it culls it's backups.

Unless I'm mistaken, that turns out not to be the case. If you
look under "options" in System > General > Time Machine, you'll
see four options for frequency of backup: Manual, Hourly, Daily, Weekly.

I set it to "Manual", then used TME to set backups for every 6 hours.

Ah!

I hadn't notice that option. It must be fairly new.

Thanks!

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