CCC offers hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly scheduling options, which suits the needs of most users. Some usage scenarios, however, demand higher frequency backups. For example, photographers might prefer to have their SD cards offloaded to a tethered computer every 5-15 minutes during a photo shoot. When the shoot is complete, though, the backup task should not run at all. Special cases like these demand more flexible execution options, which can be achieved by leveraging CCC's built-in command-line utility. These simple steps demonstrate how to set up a high-frequency backup task that you can easily start and stop and the beginning and conclusion of a photo shoot:
- Open CCC and click the New Task button in the toolbar to create a new backup task. Name it something like "Location Backup".
- Click on the Source selector and choose your tethered camera's SD card as the source.
- Drag a folder from the Finder onto CCC's Destination selector to specify that folder as the destination.
- Save the task (do not schedule this task).
- Download this example Frequent Backups script and open it in TextEdit (Applications > TextEdit.app).
- Modify the script to specify the correct location of CCC on your Mac (the default is correct if it is located in your Applications folder), the name of your backup task, and the frequency at which you prefer it to run. Save the changes. You can store this script wherever you like.
- When you're ready to start your shoot, simply double-click the frequent_backups.command script. The script will run the specified task at the specified frequency.
- When your shoot is finished, quit the Terminal application to stop the script.
If you have questions about this sort of setup or need some help getting the configuration suited to your needs, please don't hesitate to reach out to us for help.