Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
TMUTIL SNAPSHOT
Remember, this creates only a local backup on your hard disk.
Making a Full Backup
To force a full backup to take place, which involves writing files to the Time
Machine disk (the equivalent of clicking the Time Machine icon at the top
right of the desktop and clicking Back Up Now), type the following:
TMUTIL STARTBACKUP
You can also stop the backup if you want (perhaps if it's taking too long) with
the following command:
TMUTIL STOPBACKUP
Deactivating Time Machine
If for any reason you want to switch off Time Machine from the command line
(the equivalent of clicking the on/off switch within System Preferences), you
can use the following command:
SUDO TMUTIL DISABLE
You'll need to type your login password when prompted. The following will
enable Time Machine again:
SUDO TMUTIL ENABLE
Tip 348
Repair Disk Problems
Unlike Windows computers, OS X generally takes care of its disk invisibly
and requires little user intervention. You'll never need to defragment an OS
X hard disk, for example. However, there are two things you might choose to
do periodically in order to ensure the smooth running of your computer. The
first is to repair permissions, and the second is to repair the directory and
file structure. Some people habitually do both after a major update has been
applied to the system.
