Mac Time Machine

Well earlier this week I struggled with making the Mac's Time Machine work vice working some and then quitting. If you are a Windows user, then reading this is a waste of your time. Your time would be better spent dealing with Vista or solving world hunger (you have a better chance on the world hunger).

So what is Time Machine, click on it and find out. The problem I had was during the backup, it would quit. There are a number of webplaints (aka complaints documented on the web). They range from the external drive not functioning properly to software issues. After reviewing a number of blogs, webzines, FAQs, etc. I finally deduced the problem and now it works like a charm. So what did I do? Nothing original really. First I reformatted my external drive using Mac protocols. Then I just copied a short little program/script file that enable me to put this issue to rest. I used Systems Boy's writeup that got me most of the way (use the link for details). First I ran Time Machine after I unclicked Auto Logout in Systems Preferences/Security. It ran fine. I then loaded the System Boy's script file, clicked Auto Logout (set for 30 minutes) and then checked my backups after a couple of hours. Ba-da-bing, ba-da-bam, it worked.

It turns out, then if you enable Auto Logout, then when the designated inactivity period is reached (mine is 30 minutes), the system automatically un-mounts external drives. The script file prevents un-mounting external drives whenever the computer logs out. Neat!

Now you would have thunk that the Apple god's would have programmed Time Machine to work with various machine setups and not let an Auto Logout, drive shutdown, etc. stop the machine from backing up. I have a laptop and I do not routinely use it while it is connected to AC power and my external drive.

One other thing I did was download SuperDuper and run it. It will save a bootable backup for FREE. Yes FREE. For a few bucks you can register it and use its scheduling and Smart Update.

In setting up my external drive, I formatted it into 2 partitions. One is designated Backup1 and the other is Backup2. [Note - it turns out that your external drive must not have a space(s) or symbol in its name or Time Machine won't properly recognize it.] I use Backup1 as the Time Machine designated drive and Backup2 as the SuperDuper backup drive. When you use the base operation of SuperDuper, it will delete all files in the target folder so you don't want to have SuperDuper and Time Machine share a location.

This is the first real issue I have had since converting to the Mac. Now I wish I would have bought Apple stock when it was hovering around $7 a share a few years ago. I gave it a lot of thought, but no action. Right now it is trading as a 20-bagger at $175.