The story of how Mac OS X went from cron, to launchd, and ended up with Duet Activity Scheduler, to schedule background activities like backups.
Time Machine
Excessive CPU use by mds_stores is a common cause of sluggish performance. Explains what it does and what you can do bring it under control.
Has Ventura brought any relief from Disk Utility’s inability to run First Aid on Time Machine’s backups, and what about changes in Time Machine itself?
Copies, clones and backups are three different things. Here their differences are explained with examples from APFS and modern macOS.
If you plan to trade in or pass on your old Mac when you upgrade to a new one, there are pitfalls in ensuring you don’t lose any data, while ensuring your old Mac is completely wiped.
Browse log entries for a recent boot, examine the entries for Time Machine, and check for errors in another subsystem.
When Time Machine makes its backups to APFS storage, just what can and can’t you do? How can you prevent large temporary files from stealing space on storage?
Archiving is very different from backing up, from the storage media used to integrity checks. Here are pointers to help you preserve important documents.
APFS backup disks offer different possibilities for adding volumes for your own use, alongside the backup volume. How do you decide what’s best?
In macOS 12.4, it’s impossible to run First Aid on any container or APFS volume on a disk with a Time Machine APFS backup volume, except in Recovery.
The Eclectic Light Company 