Force start a Time Machine backup
One extremely simple but useful feature I found missing in Apple's Time Machine backup solution is the ability to perform a backup to an external partition or hard drive right now. Instead, Time Machine picks when it does the backups for you; typically every hour. Why Apple didn't include a small button in the System Preferences for Time Machine that you could click to force an immediate backup of your data is beyond me. It seems like an easy feature to implement and plenty of room in the Prefs pane to add it and keep things clean. I figured there still had to be a way.
I bought a new MacBook the night that Leopard was released. 6-days later Apple announced upgraded MacBook's with faster processors and over double the VRAM. The cool thing is that Apple Stores give you 15-days to exchange a newly purchased product for and upgraded one. They require that you pay a 10% "restocking fee." In my opinion, the upgraded graphics card was worth a 10% exchange cost.
The issue was that I was in a time crunch. I needed Time Machine to perform an updated, full backup of all of my data right away; not 1-hour from now. Two of the three Apple stores in the area were already sold out of the middle-range MacBook. I needed to hurry. At the very least I needed a Terminal command to copy and paste to force Time Machine to perform an immediate backup of my data.
Run this command to force Time Machine to backup data now:
/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/backupd-helper >/dev/null 2>&1 &
Open up your Terminal application in Applications: Utilities: Terminal. Then copy and paste the command above at the prompt. As long as Time Machine is turned on and the selected backup drive is connected to your Mac, this command will force Time Machine to start, making a complete backup of all of your data changes since the last time it ran.
Now I'm off to the Apple Store to exchange my MacBook for a faster, upgraded one!
Update: It turns out that Apple added this option by using the menu of the Time Machine icon in the dock. You can click and hold the icon and select "Back Up Now."
I bought a new MacBook the night that Leopard was released. 6-days later Apple announced upgraded MacBook's with faster processors and over double the VRAM. The cool thing is that Apple Stores give you 15-days to exchange a newly purchased product for and upgraded one. They require that you pay a 10% "restocking fee." In my opinion, the upgraded graphics card was worth a 10% exchange cost.
The issue was that I was in a time crunch. I needed Time Machine to perform an updated, full backup of all of my data right away; not 1-hour from now. Two of the three Apple stores in the area were already sold out of the middle-range MacBook. I needed to hurry. At the very least I needed a Terminal command to copy and paste to force Time Machine to perform an immediate backup of my data.
Run this command to force Time Machine to backup data now:
/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/backupd-helper >/dev/null 2>&1 &
Open up your Terminal application in Applications: Utilities: Terminal. Then copy and paste the command above at the prompt. As long as Time Machine is turned on and the selected backup drive is connected to your Mac, this command will force Time Machine to start, making a complete backup of all of your data changes since the last time it ran.
Now I'm off to the Apple Store to exchange my MacBook for a faster, upgraded one!
Update: It turns out that Apple added this option by using the menu of the Time Machine icon in the dock. You can click and hold the icon and select "Back Up Now."
12 Comments:
Right click on the TimeMachine icon in the dock. Back Up Now is right there. Why its not also in the Time Machine prefs pane as well, who knows.
next time try right (or ctrl) clicking on the time machine icon. you'll see a "back up now" option.
Thank you so much for posting this, helped me greatly when I was also in a hurry :-)
Hahahaha, I was so excited about this feature that I almost went the terminal route before reading the Update. Great tip.
lol , I just read your article , having just read the instructions on Macworld-Some other Time Machine features that may interest you:
If Time Machine happens to be in the middle of a backup when you put your Mac to sleep, don’t worry—the feature automatically stops and then resumes once you reconnect to your backup drive.
You’re able to browse any Time Machine backup volume, even one of a different Mac, when you plug the drive into your computer—a useful feature for multi-Mac households.
Holding down the Control key and clicking the Time Machine icon in the Dock creates a new incremental backup, if you just can’t wait for the automatic backup to take place.
Time Machine preserves access privileges associated with files on multi-user Macs.
Cheers T
Great tip, thank you so much!
How come my time machine only shows now and today on the backup listing on the right of my screen. On the demonstration it shows multiple dates to pick from.
@ yooperjoe
You probably only have one or two backups done. Once you've been running time machine for a while, it'll show you loads more than you will ever want!
So I'm pretty late to the party, but it looks like you can also ctrl+click the time machine disk icon in Finder's "Devices" list to get the "Back up now" menu item.
@ schapht
Thanks for the tip because honestly, who keeps the time machine in the dock??
WOW this couldn't have been more helpful for me.
I have a small WD Passport drive that is plenty of room for what I need to backup, and I don't keep it plugged into my computer hardly ever, but when I do I want Time Machine to immediately begin backing up my files... not an hour later.
Thanks.
Great tip for when the coding ends just before the vacation!
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