[Luke Woodward]

I suppose you could do it manually…

Essentially, the work flow would be:

-Plug in the small drive
-Set it up with Time Machine
-Open up Time Machine options and exclude everything but the system drive
-After the backup is complete, eject and unplug the drive
-Plug in the big RAID
-Open time machine preferences and set it as the backup disk
-Go back into the options and exclude everything except for the data drive (Note that all the data drives need to be in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format or Time Machine wont work with them)
-Once the backup is complete you have both your backups.

Doing it this way, I would keep the non-system external drives backing up consistently as I assume this is where you would store your media and files that would change a lot. Then every once in a while, plug in the smaller drive, switch around the preferences and back up the system again to keep it current.

This sounds like more work than I would want to do, but it could work. If you didn’t do system backups too frequently it wouldn’t be too bad.

[Luke Woodward]

Unfortunately, this would require a third party piece of software. Time machine only allows backing up to one drive.

You can set it up so that multiple drives are backed up to the single backup drive, but only one backup location can be selected at a time.

There may be some software out there that modifies time machine to do that kind of thing, but I’m not aware of any. There are things like Time Machine Editor out there which modify the interval of the backups, but I can’t find anything for managing what is backed up and what disk it goes to.

Hope that helps!

Luke

[Luke Woodward]

The start up items usually do that when the permissions for them have been changed. A Disk Utility Permissions Repair doesn’t always fix this, either. Sometimes when you get the message at start up there is a “Fix” button, but again, this doesn’t always work. The best way to fix it would be to pull the start up items and then run the installer for those applications again.

The items themselves will likely be in /Library/StartupItems
Other places to look would be /Library/LaunchAgents and /Library/LaunchDeamons. If the applications have an uninstaller, using that then reinstalling might be easier than digging out the pieces. If you do decide to go digging, I would start up with a Safe Boot first. This disables Startup and Login items, so it is “safer” to play with them in safe mode. Once you are done digging, restart, then reinstall the apps.

As far as the DVD thing goes, does it happen in a new user account? If you don’t know, can you test it and post the results?

Best,

Luke

[Luke Woodward]

How does it manifest itself, and how often does it occur?

Opening a program, randomly, after five minutes, after an hour?

Luke

[Luke Woodward]

Does the same thing happen in multiple user accounts?

If you only have one user, create a new one and test it, then post the results.

[Luke Woodward]

There are many messages in a permissions repair which come up, but can be safely ignored. You can find a list of such errors at https://support.apple.com/kb/TS1448.

What kind of glitches are you getting? Also, if there are any errors you are getting that come up over and over that are not on that list, what are they?

[Luke Woodward]

What kind of mouse is it? (Magic Mouse, Wired Mighty Mouse, Non-Apple Mouse, etc.)

[Luke Woodward]

Most of the time a plist file will be for a specific application only and wont be modified by app.

Testing in a new user will be utilizing the new user’s plist files. Therefore, if the issue is not present in a new user, you are using the same applications, but different plist files (generally speaking). The problem is with the user account.

If the problem persists in the new user, by the same token, no manner of pulling out plist files will fix the problem and the issue has to be dealt with at an application level, usually involving a reinstall of the application, but not always.

If it works the same on two machines with two different versions of the OS, then it may well be the way the applications are written and not something that can be fixed with troubleshooting.

Good luck, and let me know how the testing goes. You can also try a safe boot to see if the problem persists there, but this may not allow certain components of the apps to run. Check out https://support.apple.com/kb/ht1455 for instructions.

[Luke Woodward]

This post is a bit old, but does this happen in a different user account? If it does not it might be a plist file problem which is fixable.