Mac osx time machine command line

Note that this is not your top-level Backups.

The ins and outs of using tmutil to backup, restore, and review Time Machine backups

The output of this command can take a long time depending on how many snapshots you have and how fast your Time Machine drive is. Apple configured Time Machine to identify source drives with a unique identifier UUID , something that is assigned when the drive is formatted and a new file system is created. This usually works fine, and helps prevent critical Time Machine data from getting mixed up between drives if you connect your external Time Machine drive to another computer, for example.

Next, open Terminal, type the following command, and press Return. This can save both time and allow you to access and restore older data. There are many more Time Machine Utility functions and commands to explore, so check out the manual page for more info. You can also use these commands in conjunction with AppleScripts to create just about any custom workflow you can think of.

Apple may have made Time Machine seem simple, but with a little experimentation in Terminal with tmutil, you can unlock its true power. Filed Under: To get this information, type the following command note that you may or may not need root privileges for this command depending on the contents of your Time Machine backups: Associate a New Drive with an Existing Time Machine Backup Apple configured Time Machine to identify source drives with a unique identifier UUID , something that is assigned when the drive is formatted and a new file system is created.

Your Mac will start analyzing your Time Machine backups to produce the drift numbers we need, specifically, the amount of data added, the amount of data removed, and the amount changed.

The numbers will be provided for each slice or increment that your Time Machine stores. These numbers will be different for everyone because they're based on how much data you store in the backup, and how long you've been using Time Machine.

Typical slice sizes are per day, per week, or per month. It can take some time to run the drift calculations, depending on the size of your backup drive, so be patient. When the calculations are finished, Terminal will display drift data for each Time Machine backup slice in the following format:. You will see multiple groups of the above output. This will continue until the final average is displayed:. Don't use just the average drift to make decisions about storage upgrades; you need to look at the drift data for each time slice.

Control Time Machine from the command line | Macworld

For example, my largest addition occurred one week when I added nearly 50 GB of data to the backup; the smallest addition was 2. So, what did the drift measurement tell me? The first drift measurement was from last August, which means I'm storing about 33 weeks of backups on my current backup drive. On average, I add more data to a backup than I delete.

Although I still have some headroom, someday soon Time Machine will start reducing the number of weeks of information it stores, which means a larger backup drive may be in my future. Share Pin Email.

• Discover How Much Data is Added to or Removed From Your Backups;
• Compare Time Machine Backups and List All Changes Between Backups.
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Tom Nelson has written hundreds of articles, tutorials, and reviews for Other World Computing and About. He is the president of Coyote Moon, Inc.

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But before we can issue the appropriate command, we need another piece of information; namely, where the Time Machine directory is stored. In Terminal, enter the following at the command line prompt: Terminal will display the current Time Machine directory.

Highlight the directory pathname that Terminal spits out, then click Terminal's Edit menu and select Copy. Now that you've copied the Time Machine directory to the clipboard, return to the Terminal prompt and enter: Once the directory name is entered, add a closing quote ". Surrounding the directory pathname with quotes will ensure that if the pathname contains any special characters or spaces Terminal will still understand the entry. Here's an example using my Mac's Time Machine directory: Press return or enter. When the calculations are finished, Terminal will display drift data for each Time Machine backup slice in the following format: Start date - end date.

This will continue until the final average is displayed: