Tired of waiting for Time Machine backup to complete on your Mac? Here’s a Terminal command to speed things up. Just follow the guide in this post for details.

1. How To Do A Manual Backup Using Terminal In Mac Pro
2. How To Do A Manual Backup Using Terminal In Mac Safe Mode
3. How To Do A Manual Backup Using Terminal In Mac Os X

We have already provided steps to create a backup using Time Machine on Mac and also on deleting the Time Machine Backup. While creating a backup, you would have noticed that the backup process is quite slow. That is because it is designed to consume least resources, letting you do your work on Mac easily.

• Login as a local administrator, but not as the user account you want to backup. Launch Disk Utility. Choose File » New » Image from Folder. Select the user's home folder /Users/username. Save the disk image to your backup drive. Enter an admin username and password when prompted.
• Select “Back Up Now” from the menu and a manual backup will start. Follow this two-step procedure every time you want to do a backup. Tags: mac, os x, terminal, time machine.
• Dec 05, 2017  You can use Terminal to get direct access to your files without using the Finder. To do so, you build something called a path. Paths look similar in some ways to website sub-directories, and follow the structure of your folders. Paths take two forms: absolute paths and relative paths.
• When troubleshooting a computer problem sometimes its best to just wipe the hard drive and start fresh. I developed the following method for backing up user home folders so that they can easily be restored to another computer or the same computer while preserving proper permissions, ACLs, and file.

If the Time Machine backup would be speedier, then the Mac would almost be unusable until the backup process is completed. Anyways, if you want to speed things up, then it is very much possible to do so with the help of a Terminal command.

May 26, 2016  We have already provided steps to create a backup using Time Machine on Mac and also on deleting the Time Machine Backup.While creating a backup, you would have noticed that the backup process is quite slow. That is because it is designed to consume least resources, letting you do your work on Mac easily. Asr, or the Apply Software Restore utility is yet another excellent and efficient way to perform a backup. ASR can do everything that Ditto can do plus it has the ability to copy a hard disk at the block level. The block level is the “lowest” possible form to access a hard drive and provides true 100% replication of data. Your Mac would back up when the drive is connected. You can also choose to perform manual backups instead. To do this, open Time Machine’s settings screen and toggle Time Machine to “Off.” You can then click the Time Machine icon on the menu bar and select “Back Up Now” to perform a manual backup at any time.

Before we move ahead with the command part, let me tell you that this is an advance level trick and shouldn’t be used on a regular basis. The command will prioritize the backup process by allocating higher CPU and RAM to the tasks. This will make your Mac almost unusable because there won’t be any resources left to allocate to other tasks. So proceed only if you are badly in need to do this trick.

How to Speed up Time Machine Backup on Mac

How To Do A Manual Backup Using Terminal In Mac Pro

Step #1. Open the Terminal app on your Mac from /Applications/Utilities alternatively, you can launch it from spotlight search.

Step #2. Now type in the command given below and hit Enter:

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0

Step #3. You’ll need to enter the Admin password to execute a SUDO command, so do it.

That’s it; you can now notice that the Time remaining of the backup process will reduce drastically and at the same time, CPU and RAM consumption will also increase remarkably. In case you wish to roll back the changes to its original values, just restart your Mac. The changes can also be rolled back by one more Terminal command and it is given below:

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=1

As said earlier, it’s not a trick to mess with all the time. So better use it when you are in a hurry to complete the backup.

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Provided the user account isn't the only admin account you can just use the System Preferences option to delete the user account. It prompts to archive the account to a disk image or a folder.

Deleting the account does not preserve ownership and permissions, as this method does. When deleting/archiving an account you're removing the user and all associated information, so the system changes the permissions to be accessible by other (admin) users.

Why would you want to preserve ACL's & ownership? The OS will restore the correct ownership after the new user is created on the new system.
Don't ACL's use the UUID of the account & not the user ID? So when you make the new account the UUID's no longer match? Right click the account in System Prefs & select Advanced options…
Anyway, if it works for you, great.

Huh. The right-click-user-to-see-Advanced-Options bit should be a hint unto itself -- never knew about that! :)

Neat! Neither did I! Now I'm going to have to try right clicking in all such lists!

> and then will verify the home folder as having the correct ownership...
Does it actually check the ownership of *all* files in the folder, including sub-folders?

There's Time Machine and also the Migration Assistant. Most of the time, if there is storage available, I would want to back up the entire disk, probably as a disk image, using Super Duper, CCC, Disk Utility or ddrescue if things are really bad. Then you can install a new system, run Migration Assistant and select as many user accounts as you want to move from the backup to the new system.

Definitely true that Time Machine or other utilities will give you a more complete backup of the entire system. This process was designed as a quick and easy solution for moving user accounts between machines without migrating all data. It's easy to demonstrate and doesn't require much technical skill.

I usually do the backing up via System Preferences. Simply delete the account. You will get asked if you want to archive it in a disk image.

Again, using System Preferences to delete/archive the account does not preserve ACLs, permissions, ownership, etc..

Maybe I'm a dinosaur, but I rsync my $HOME to a small NAS daily, via a root cron job.
Given how few actual changes there are (other than data in Dropbox which is excluded from the rsync anyway) after the initial heavy run, daily rsyncs take mere seconds.
It's as maybe not quite as good as time machine or whatever it's called, but this method has worked for the past few years. I have had H/D's crash on me once or twice - oh yes, but never lost userdata, thanks to this method.
I suppose this is a pretty decent illustration of 'whatever works for $you' :D

Using rsync will also make it a recursive backup which is both faster and more practical than using Disk Utility. The downside is that it force you to the CLI.

Aaaah, but the CLI is a haven of refuge in troubled and unstable gooey times. It is predictable, it is always your friend.
The CLI doesn't care if you see other shells, or even have a beer after severely misusing it.
*cough*

What's your rsync command, the full line please?

Not terribly adventurous:

rsync -avz -e ssh /Users/username/ someuser@10.0.0.100:/home/username/macbackup/

How To Do A Manual Backup Using Terminal In Mac Safe Mode

ssh keys exist on both ends, I should add, thus eliminating any need for a manual login

How To Do A Manual Backup Using Terminal In Mac Os X

HTH!

This is a good hint. But... There are things to consider before you go there...
There is no point doing this unless you are sure that it is a system level problem. First establish whether it is a system or a user level problem by reproducing the problem with a fresh user account. If you restore the user account, it may just bring back all that bad stuff.
Hope this helps :)