Time Machine reminder?

[gavspen]

Maybe I'm making this up, but I seem to remember that Time Machine used to remind me when I hadnt made a back up for, I think it was, 10 days. Kind of a useful thing. There's no preference or setting for it, as far as I can see.

Am I just imagining things?

G.

[mikehalloran]

iOS, iPadOS will remind you. If you’ve left your device off for awhile or you have cell data turned of and haven’t been near Wi-Fi for long enough, you’ll get this. I see it every time I turn on my iPod Touch 7 every few months.

Time Machine has worked entirely in the background for many builds of MacOS now. The only alert you see nowadays is if there’s an error.

[bayswater]

I still get reminders that I haven’t done a back up for 10 days, or sometimes hundreds of days. Usually it’s wrong — the modification date on the backup image will be recent and files a few hours old will be restorable from the backup.

Hard to trust a backup app that can’t remember what it’s done.

[gavspen]

iOS, iPadOS will remind you. If you’ve left your device off for awhile or you have cell data turned of and haven’t been near Wi-Fi for long enough, you’ll get this. I see it every time I turn on my iPod Touch 7 every few months.

Time Machine has worked entirely in the background for many builds of MacOS now. The only alert you see nowadays is if there’s an error.

There's Time Machine for iPads? Dont they back up to the cloud? My iPad is wifi only (so not cell data) but I'm always near wifi so I havent seen this.

I was thinking of my desk top mac. The Time Machine back up disc isnt connected all the time (so not always running in the background) and I used to get reminders. Not anymore, for some reason.

Not a big deal, just wondering.

[mikehalloran]

iOS, iPadOS will remind you. If you’ve left your device off for awhile or you have cell data turned of and haven’t been near Wi-Fi for long enough, you’ll get this. I see it every time I turn on my iPod Touch 7 every few months.

Time Machine has worked entirely in the background for many builds of MacOS now. The only alert you see nowadays is if there’s an error.

There's Time Machine for iPads? Dont they back up to the cloud? My iPad is wifi only (so not cell data) but I'm always near wifi so I havent seen this.

I was thinking of my desk top mac. The Time Machine back up disc isnt connected all the time (so not always running in the background) and I used to get reminders. Not anymore, for some reason.

Not a big deal, just wondering.

iOS/iPadOS defaults to backing up automatically to iCloud every time you charge it. It normally uses wiFi but can use cellular data if you allow this (but why?). You can defeat this (again, why?). If your phone is lost or stolen, the replacement will start restoring as soon as it is set up — if WiFi only, this may take awhile. iCloud does not restore your Apps — the App Store does that.

You can also back your iOS/iPadOS data to a Mac or PC by connecting directly. You must check the box for Encrypted or passwords etc. will not be saved. Exactly how depends on your OS—it changed in Catalina, Big Sur or Monterey, I don't remember. Apple has Support Docs for this.

Time Machine is designed to operate automatically and in the background. For best results, connect wirelessly, over Ethernet or Thunderbolt (TB and 10GB Ethernet are the fastest). This way, it will work as designed whenever your Mac is on. Backups connected over USB sometimes hiccup, go to sleep or have other issues that can cause errors.

Don't turn TM off or you can't take advantage of this.
viewtopic.php?t=64689
You have a 24 hour window for instant restore and that has saved my butt many times.

There are extensions that can be on your Mac that really mess with Time Machine. An older CodeMeter license extension (used by Autotune and others) really messed with my system and did not let me log into the Recovery Partition. After Apple totally hosed my system not finding the problem, a full TM Restore did work, thank goodness. When I found the real problem and updated CodeMeter, everything worked again.

That Restore of my 4TB System drive took nearly 40 hours but not because I was backed up over Ethernet. The issue was TRIM and Garbage Collection. SSDs need time for TRIM to prepare the cells for new data. My drive was 97% full. The fastest TM restore cannot go faster than the cells are ready for new data — in this case, about 40 hours. Had Apple not hosed my system and trashed my Snapshots in the process, that full Restore would have taken less than two minutes.

Fun huh?

[gavspen]

Just wanted to say Mike, you're always there with a wealth of knowledge.

Even if I generally dont have a clue what you're talking about, or half of it anyway, I want to thank you for always being here to help out. It's much appreciated.

Gavin