
(In general, one should never run any script as super user that one doesn't completely understand.) I have hard-wired my backup disk and log file directory, so the script needs to be adapted for use on a different system. Here is the Time Machine script, written in Python. See Modding the WiebeTech RTX220-QJ for an example of how one might do this.

To complete this task, one can either use passively cooled external enclosures, or replace the fan on an actively cooled enclosure.
#Backup scheduler for time machine 1 6 1 software
Together, these scripts implement the software portion of silencing my external drives. SuperDuper! requests that I not document this functionality for their SDCopy tool, so you should ask them to support mounting and unmounting backup volumes on demand.
#Backup scheduler for time machine 1 6 1 mac os x
You can suggest that Apple implement this functionality for Time Machine, by providing feedback at Mac OS X Feedback. Calling SDCopy is unsupported, but it has worked flawlessly for me for years, and opens up the possibility of updating folders as easily as volumes.

One can reverse engineer a replacement for backupd-helper by watching SuperDuper! as it runs using the command line command ps -ax | grep SDCopy. One can create a similar script to automate SuperDuper! backups. Our script will mount and unmount the backup disk as necessary, and call Time Machine by this mechanism. One can still launch Time Machine from the command line or a script, by calling backupd-helper. Turn off Time Machine in System Preferences, but leave the correct backup disk selected. Specifically, replace: StartCalendarInterval Hour 3 Minute 15with StartInterval3600The syntax for this file is documented by the man page ist(5).Now, after restart, any script placed in /etc/periodic/hourly will be run every hour as super user. Then clone the file from, replacing each instance of daily by hourly, and replacing the StartCalendarInterval by a StartInterval of 3600 seconds.

Using sudo in Terminal, create the parallel directory /etc/periodic/hourly and the parallel file /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/. Scripts that implement nightly tasks can be placed in the /etc/periodic/daily directory, which is run at 3:15 AM by /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/.

A mounted volume is more prone to corruption, and open file dialogs needlessly spin up mounted volumes, contributing to a user experience latency that is most apparent if the primary drive is solid state.īy creating an /etc/periodic/hourly directory modeled after the existing /etc/periodic/daily directory, and adapting, there is a place to put a script that handles mounting and unmounting the Time Machine backup disk, and launching Time Machine. It is both inconvenient and less safe to keep backup volumes mounted when not in use.
