sleep-waketime-machine
I use Time Machine, with an external hard drive connected by USB, to back up my MBA. If Time Machine is in the middle of backing up my drive and I close the lid of my computer, Time Machine will stop the backup and (as far as I can tell) will not resume backing up until I wake my computer back up.
Is there a way to change this behavior? I want it to continue backing up, until it finishes the backup, even when I close the lid of my computer in the middle of a backup. Is there a way to do that?
The sparsebundle is how Time Machine backs up using the network method. The Backups.backupdb method is how it backs up when the drive is hooked up locally therefore you can't make it create a sparse bundle if its connected locally because that's the way time machine works. If you want it to make a sparse bundle you have to backup through a network. It should not make a difference to you since you'll be accessing it through time machine without having to worry about files etc.
Parallels have instructions here for making their software (version 6 or later) work better with Time Machine. You can either optimise your VMs for Time Machine backup, or disable backup for them.
Parallels Desktop for Mac includes improved integration with Time Machine. When backing up the virtual machine, it will only backup the recent changes (the latest snapshot), but not the whole virtual hard drive. Thus, the backup process will take less time and use less space on your Time Machine storage device.
To enable improved integration with Time Machine, please go to Virtual Machine Configuration, choose Options and hit Backup.
Select "Optimize for Time Machine" in SmartGuard menu.
If you do not want your virtual machine to be backed up by Time Machine, you need go to Virtual Machine Configuration --> Options --> Backup and put a checkmark on “Do not back up with Time Machine”.
In Parallels 7 the control panel looks like this:
Note that when you enable this feature, it will take up more space on the disk. Also, Auto Compress will be disabled.
Best Answer
Your observation of how Time Machine is backing up is the same as mine. If TM is running a backup and you put your machine to sleep it will resume that backup on wake, but it will not keep your Air awake when you close the lid Unless you wish to prevent your Air from going to sleep when you close the lid, this is the expected behavior.
Time Machine takes its sweet time, especially if you have a chunk of data that needs to be backed up. I tend to let my backup finish by plugging in my machine and running Caffeine and then putting it to sleep later. The truth is, though, I've never had a real problem with the backup restarting on wake.