Turning TM Off and On?
 

I would like to set SD to clone my Time Machine files each night and as suggested in the FAQ would like to turn TM off during the operation. How do I go about automating this process? Say, turn TM off at midnight and back on at 2:00AM. I'm absolutely no good with scripting and have never used Automator, so will need exact, precise steps if either is involved in the answer.

Thanks!
Charles

There's no documented way of automatically turning Time Machine off, Charles, although I believe someone in the forums has previously posted the way they do it.

That said, given the size and complexity of a typical Time Machine backup volume, I'm not sure it's practical to copy it every night...

Turning Off TM Automatically
 

Dave,

I assume from you answer that using smart update the entire TM files would have to be rewritten each time, is that correct? That being the case, I would maybe go for weekly backups of TM.

I've searched for instructions on automating TM off and on without success. If anyone knows the name of the thread I would appreciate hearing from you.

Charles

Have you tried a more general Google search for info with something like:

disable "time machine" superduper

?

Turning Off TM Automatically
 

Well no, I had not tried a general Google search, but, now I have and with success. I did find a posting here at Shirt Pocket that gave two short scripts to turn TM off and then back on. Now we will see if my limited knowledge of scripts will get the job done.

Thanks!!!

My experience has been that relatively simple Google/web searches that include a forum's posts will sometimes have more fruitful results than using that forum's own built-in searching. I'll always enjoy learning something new/more/different about searching methods than I currently know… and sharing it. :)

Turning Off TM Automatically
 

I need a little help with this simple script as I am in new territorty here. The line of code is:

defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine "AutoBackup" -boolean no

And I get the error:

sh: /Users/Charles/Library/Application Support/SuperDuper!/Copy Scripts/tm_disable.dset: Permission denied

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Well, a 'dset' is a copy script, not a shell script, so I'm not sure what you created there. In general, you'd create a plain text file that would look like:

#!/bin/sh
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine "$1" -boolean no

Where $1 is the name of the source volume, as explained in the User's Guide.

You'd save that, probably with a .sh extension, and then you have to use terminal to set its permissions to allow execution, i.e.

chmod +x /path/to/the/shell/script