How to detect time machine?

Question

I need to distinguish the hard disk partition that is being used for the time machine from the other ordinary partitions. Is there an API to detect the time machine partition/volume?

Answer 1

As long as you're on Lion or above, Apple added a command line utility for time machine called tmutil. According to the man page, running tmutil destinationinfo returns the following information:

Name          The volume label as shown in Finder.
Kind          Whether the destination is locally attached storage or a network device.
URL           In the case of a network destination, the URL used for Time Machine 
              configuration.
Mount Point   If the volume is currently mounted, the path in the file system at which
              it was mounted.
ID            The unique identifier for the destination.

When the -X option is provided, output will be printed in XML property list format.