[julianv]

The SD User's Guide recommends quitting all apps before running a backup. I usually do this by restarting with a Safe Boot (shift key pressed during restart). But I would like to set up a system for automatically triggering scheduled backups when the Mac is not in use (e.g., late at night). I'm not sure how to reconcile these two issues.

I could reboot the Mac in safe mode on those nights when there is a scheduled backup. But that requires me to remember to do that, and to remember to reboot in normal mode the next morning. This extra work defeats part of the rationale for automated scheduling.

I don't have many startup items running. I do run Microsoft Database Daemon (part of Office 2008), and this is often cited as one of the processes that should be killed during a backup. SD has provisions for running a shell script before a backup and another one after the backup. So I created the following two scripts:

#!/bin/bash
osascript -e 'tell application "Microsoft Database Daemon" to quit'

#!/bin/bash
osascript -e 'tell application "Microsoft Database Daemon" to launch'

The first one runs before the backup, the second one runs after it. I tried running with the scripts, and so far, I have seen no problems. Does this look like a reasonable solution?