Multiple "wake" times?

[Dlass]

So I'd like to back up to two separate disks every day, and there I have other scheduled events that need my Mac to be awake. But on my Mac (M1 iMac,Monterey) Energy Saver offers precisely ONE directive for waking. I can't make it wake on Tuesday and Thursday at 2am, and I can't wake the Mac every day at 2am and 3am. That's nuts. What am I missing?

Yes, I could just keep the thing awake for an hour, and do all my events in that one hour after telling it to wake then, but that doesn't allow any flexibility. Also, then, I have to endure the display being lit for an hour at a time, ALL THE TIME. Energy Saver offers to "Schedule specific times". Nope, you can schedule ONE specific time only.

 

[TonyAguila]

So I'd like to back up to two separate disks every day, and there I have other scheduled events that need my Mac to be awake. But on my Mac (M1 iMac,Monterey) Energy Saver offers precisely ONE directive for waking. I can't make it wake on Tuesday and Thursday at 2am, and I can't wake the Mac every day at 2am and 3am. That's nuts. What am I missing?

Yes, I could just keep the thing awake for an hour, and do all my events in that one hour after telling it to wake then, but that doesn't allow any flexibility. Also, then, I have to endure the display being lit for an hour at a time, ALL THE TIME. Energy Saver offers to "Schedule specific times". Nope, you can schedule ONE specific time only.

Are you using Time Machine to do your backups? If so, then your Mac does not have to be awake to do the backup, as long as it’s turned on and Power Nap enabled. You don’t even have to be logged in for Time Machine to automatically perform the backup. But if your intent is for Time Machine to do the backups to each drive once a day, then the second one will have to be done manually.

Time Machine gives you the option to back up automatically every hour, every day, or every week. If you select every day, it might perform the backup to one drive for one day and to the other the next day. Not sure, because I chose every hour, and the backups happen hourly alternating between the two drives. I recommend this anyway, because hourly backups will allow you to selectively restore files that you worked on during the day if you need to revert to an earlier version a particular number of hours before.

No worries about Time Machine drives getting full because it will automatically cull older backups to make room. However, if you are using a different method of backing up, then the proselytizing I just did was for naught.

 

[Dlass]

I'm using SuperDuper. Let me be specific. I set up to back up to disk #1 at 2:00am. In Energy Saver, I instructed to "wake" at 1:59am. That backup went flawlessly. But I also had set up to back up to disk #2 at 3:00am. Of course, no "wake" command prepended that. That backup simply never happened. I am concerned that the Mac went to sleep in that hour. Now, in Energy Saver, I DO have the box checked that should prevent the machine from going to sleep, but ... I just don't understand how to diagnose what is going on here.

Now, I have learned about the pmset command, and how one can schedule many wakes in terminal. Good stuff! But https://support.apple.com/en-ae/guide/mac-help/mchl40376151/mac doesn't really give very good instructions on how to use it. Can someone point me to a better set of instructions? I should say that man pmset doesn't help a lot either. I do

sudo pmset repeat wake weekdays 0259

and I get

Error: badly formatted repeating power event

 

[TonyAguila]

I'm using SuperDuper. Let me be specific. I set up to back up to disk #1 at 2:00am. In Energy Saver, I instructed to "wake" at 1:59am. That backup went flawlessly. But I also had set up to back up to disk #2 at 3:00am. Of course, no "wake" command prepended that. That backup simply never happened. I am concerned that the Mac went to sleep in that hour. Now, in Energy Saver, I DO have the box checked that should prevent the machine from going to sleep, but ... I just don't understand how to diagnose what is going on here.

Now, I have learned about the pmset command, and how one can schedule many wakes in terminal. Good stuff! But https://support.apple.com/en-ae/guide/mac-help/mchl40376151/mac doesn't really give very good instructions on how to use it. Can someone point me to a better set of instructions? I should say that man pmset doesn't help a lot either. I do

sudo pmset repeat wake weekdays 0259

and I get

Error: badly formatted repeating power event

If you are using SuperDuper, why don’t you try its schedule feature. I don’t have personal experience using it because I rely on Time Machine. But I do have registered copies of SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner, Chronosync, FoldersSynchronizer… shows my obsession with backups, I guess. Each one has a special use for me, but Time Machine is still my prime backup utility.

Just click on the Schedule… button and a (fairly friendly) window will open to accept your input. You will probably have an easier time navigating through the steps because I don’t use SD much.

 

[Dlass]

The problem is not scheduling. That's trivial with SuperDuper. The problem is when scheduled backups DON'T HAPPEN. I'm concerned that they aren't happening because the machine isn't "awake" when the backup is supposed to start, and the issue is how to ensure that the machine is awake before the backup starts. Energy Saver allows you to wake the machine up ONCE. But if you're doing two backups, that's not enough.

I'd like some counseling on using pmset. What is the proper pmset statement to comand a wake-up at a given time on every weekday? Energy Saver is a one-wakeup limited front-end to pmset.

 

[TonyAguila]

The problem is not scheduling. That's trivial with SuperDuper. The problem is when scheduled backups DON'T HAPPEN. I'm concerned that they aren't happening because the machine isn't "awake" when the backup is supposed to start, and the issue is how to ensure that the machine is awake before the backup starts. Energy Saver allows you to wake the machine up ONCE. But if you're doing two backups, that's not enough.

I'd like some counseling on using pmset. What is the proper pmset statement to comand a wake-up at a given time on every weekday? Energy Saver is a one-wakeup limited front-end to pmset.

Go to Window > Show Log.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

type - one of sleep, wake, poweron, shutdown, wakeorpoweron
date/time - "MM/dd/yy HH:mm:ss" (in 24 hour format; must be in quotes)
time - HH:mm:ss
weekdays - a subset of MTWRFSU ("M" and "MTWRF" are valid strings)
owner - a string describing the person or program who is scheduling this one-time power event (optional)

Link

 

[Dlass]

Thanks, but a well-formed pmset command statement to schedule repeated wakes at a certain time would be appreciated. BTW, the examples I saw had the time just in hh:mm. Pmset is a complicated command, and the man page doesn't help me a lot. I tried a few iterations, and kept getting errors.

The SuperDuper log is great, but if the job is skipped, I don't think the log is going to show anything.

Dave Nanian had an excellent idea. Turns out you can schedule backups back-to-back. So if I schedule backup #1 for 2:00am, and backup #2 for 2:01am, both will run, even if the first backup takes five minutes. That way, the Mac won't have a chance to go to sleep. Am trying that now.