To sleep the disks or not: M1 Mini (very basic question)

[mwidjaya]

Obviously depends on your work and work setup, but contrary to popular belief, there's no particular magic to having it backup every hour. If less critical work going on and main files in cloud, for example, remembering to do it once a day or so is fine.

Yep.

Hourly is overkill for my mini in home environment.

TM is off but I use TimeMachineEditor to schedule weekly run of TM after hours.

TimeMachineEditor

tclementdev.com

 

[armoured]

TM is off but I use TimeMachineEditor to schedule weekly run of TM after hours.

That's a good solution to be sure.

But in case anyone thinks that using software to run TM requires more involvement than they want to, it also works perfectly fine to just plug in your TM drive once in a while, say for example while stepping away for lunch.

Don't really need to think about unplugging it afterwards, either - just whenever you get around to it.

Personally I don't find TM to take that much in the way of resources, I hardly notice it unless the drive itself is noisy. Most of the time anyway.

One warning though: TM is slow if it hasn't been connected for a while. About the only circumstances in which I notice that - when I decide I need to do a backup before doing something important. Like going away on a trip, updating system software, big changes in organisation or software used, etc. Then it's annoying because you want to get going and TM is taking a long time to start. That's one of the advantages to leaving the TM drive plugged in; if you think you have something coming up, plug it in the night before.

My other warning to TM users: TM does not systematically warn if the drive is plugged in and it's not been successful. You really need to check in TM preferences pane that the most recent backup is actually recent. On one laptop I have it sometimes gets 'stuck' and doesn't warn that it looks like it's running but hasn't actually completed the most recent backup.

 

[Marty_Macfly]

Hi All! 😀


Festive greetings (still)
Hope you are all stuffed full of turkey still and expecting your next serving today as well 🤣


RE: Overnight backups etc - M1 MBA just turns off overnight if not plugged in.
I tried that idea of mine - To give the MBA battery a workout - Not a goer I’m afraid.


What I tried:
1. M1 MBA not plugged into power
2. Left on overnight, including the wifi left on as well.
3. Photos - shed loads of xmas photos and a 90mb slideshow to upload to the iCloud - I left the mac on overnight to do this.


The Result:
1. Checked 1st thing - WIFI LEDs not flickering at all. No traffic.
2. M1 MBA - all photos still to upload
3. M1 MBA battery at 100%
4. As soon as I woke the MBA, the WIFI LEDs started flickering signifying traffic.
5. Bit of swearing under my breath
6. Plugged in power to MBA, and left it to run

7. Came back an hour later - photos now all uploaded - Doh!



Oh well, onto the next trial and error idea....


Best wishes
Martin

 

[deckard666]

Leave it on 24/7. No need to sleep. Just turn off the display, or set display sleep if you prefer. Even pre-M1, most Minis use nearly very little power (about 6-12 Watts for most), when idle.

Look at the M1...sips power (6 W at idle), no heat. Amazing. Let it run.

Modern OSes are happy to run 24/7, with an occasional reboot.

Historically...powering on and off HDs is more wear and tear than spinning 24/7 too.

My cMP has been on 24/7 for last 6 years....absolutely zero issues with it. All I do at night is turn the display off.