Setting up your backuplist+ preferences

There are several options that affect your use of backuplist+. These are "Global" and affect all backup sets.

Basic Settings for each backup set

  1. Entering your password: You can enter your password here and backuplist+ will encrypt it ( strongly ) and un encrypt it on the fly to launch rsync, a separate process to copy files. If you are only copying your personal files, you do not need to enter the password. It is necessary however for copying System files and making Bootable Clones of your hard drive. There is a small but serious security risk here. If anyone gets hold of your computer while you are logged in, they could use backuplist+ to copy, or delete important files.
  2. Check for updates: backuplist+ will check for updates daily. Important to keep things up to date!
  3. Make backuplist+ a login item: important if you want to schedule backups - will launch backuplist+ at startup.
  4. Slow down rsync: rsync uses a lot of CPU and while you can do other work, it is best to let it run when you are not working on your computer and especially not on large files since their transfer could be affected or even corrupted.
  5. Create debug report: useful to me if there are problems and will also generate an rsync error file in the /User/Library/Application Support/Backuplist folder along with the backuplist.log file.
  6. Save rsync output: unless you want to see no progress report or rsync log file, do not uncheck this box. It is checked by default.
  7. Run backups in background: this can be a bit confusing. This is best used in conjunction with the "Toggle background only" menu item ( in the menu bar, backuplist main menu. ) With this option, backuplist+ will run entirely in background. No progress bar etc. If you select "Toggle background only" in the backuplist main menu and restart, backuplist will show up as an icon in your menu bar, next to the time and any other "menulets." With this option selected, backups will only be apparent by the little "wheel" in the icon spinning. You can then close the main window and run backups without it open, or scheduled backups will run without much fanfare...


See also

Choose a backup destination
Choose a backup folder

Setting the copy method