Time Machine - Manual Back-ups

[imac_ben]

Hello,

I recently had a fusion drive begin to fail on my late 2013 27" iMac. Thanks to the expertise on this forum and a bit of luck on my end, I was able to get most of my files back and get the machine running again on an external ssd.

I have kept a fairly good practice of manually backing up important files but never tried an automated full system back-up. After this incident I would like to try using Time Machine. I have been reading about how it works and it seems like a good system. There is just one aspect of it that I can't seem to figure out:

Is it possible to set up Time Machine to only back-up my system when I specify, rather than hourly? I have an external hdd I would like to use for it, but I don't want to leave it plugged in and spinning constantly. Rather I would like to just plug it in once every few days or any time I have completed some important work. I have found some work-arounds for this via third party applications and terminal commands, but nothing for El Capitan.

Does anyone know of a way to do this on El Capitan 10.11.6?

Thank you.

Ben.

 

[glenthompson]

If you unplug a Time Machine drive, it will stop the backups to it. When you reconnect the drive, Time Machine will resume backups. Some people use with with multiple drives for off-site rotation.

Main danger in doing this is forgetting to plug it in. You can also lose the ability to recover files created or modified during the lapse. No real reason not to keep the drive connected at all times. It will have minimal effect on the life of the drive.

 

[MisterSavage]

This is what I do. I just turn it on when I want to do a backup. Unmount and turn off the drive when I'm done.

When my iMac got bricked I was able to completely restore from my Time Machine drive.

 

[imac_ben]

okay, that sounds pretty straightforward. thank you for the tips!