Time Machine: Force Backup Now
Contributed by David Kirk 
Tagged: Mac OS X Leopard In OS X 10.5 Leopard, Time Machine will handle the backups with minimal user input. This works well for a fixed backup system. However, when connecting external drives, the automated system does not work well. Who wants to connect a drive and then wait 10-15 minutes for the backup to kick in? Here is how to force time machine to start the backup process.
I connect my external drive to my macbook pro and wait… and wait, and wait. Finally, the backup kicks in.
Forcing Time Machine to start backing up is actually pretty easy. There are two ways to do it:
The first is to right-click (ctrl-click) on the Time Machine icon in the dock and select Back Up Now from the menu.
Alternatively, you can just tell Time Machine to start by the following terminal command:
/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/backupd-helper
If the code box above doesn’t work well for you, here is the terminal command with a line break to allow it to appear on this page easier. Just leave the linebreak out when typing into the terminal:
/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle
/Contents/Resources/backupd-helper
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Brendan said on December 31, 2009
thanks! just what I was after :-)
Eric said on March 26, 2010
Ditto..just the situation I was in and the answer I needed. Thank you!
Anonymous said on May 5, 2010
Perfect thanks! I had some problems backing up and this went wonderfully!
TGIX said on July 6, 2010
Not making that easier was a seriously stoopid error. Apple needs to fix this and they have had ample opportunity to do so. The only reason they don’t want us to have complete control over backups (as we had prior to OSX, when we were able to make Startup Disks with SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner) is that they gain control at our expense. It’s all about control to get you into their Apple Store where you may even get a free repair (I did) but should NOT have needed it in the first place! Let us go back to having control so we can maintain and repair our own! (Still a zillion times better than that Winblows idiocy so many lemmings bought into for so long and have fiiiiiiiiiiinally realized they were just plain wrong).
SV said on May 26, 2011
Yes the command is what I am exactly looking for, thank you!