andrewlikesthesun

Q: Time machine backups very, very slow

I've upgraded to El Capitan a few days ago. Launched Time Machine to do a 16 GB backup on Friday at 4pm and its STILL backing up. Only 7 GB backed up. Its been 26 hours. ***!!! This is ridiculous! I'm using a D-Link Sharecenter as a NAS drive for my backups. Firmware is up to date. Using a WiFi connection. Ethernet is just as slow. I've noticed slower backups since Yosemite OSX. Has anybody else had issues? Should I stop the backup, restart my iMac? Any suggestions would be great.

iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2011), OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Oct 10, 2015 3:27 PM

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Q: Time machine backups very, very slow

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  • by Ale76,

    Ale76 Ale76 Dec 2, 2015 3:56 PM in response to David Bader
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Dec 2, 2015 3:56 PM in response to David Bader

    Same issue here since El Capitan my Time Machine back up over wifi to an external NAS Synology has been sluggish, it takes hours to back up few MBs of data!!!! I have sent feedbacks to Apple as this process is clearly broken. Before with Yosemite it would take minutes at most.

  • by bobngu,

    bobngu bobngu Dec 2, 2015 4:12 PM in response to andrewlikesthesun
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 2, 2015 4:12 PM in response to andrewlikesthesun

    Add me to the list of people who are experiencing painfully slow TM backup across network on a USB drive. From the comments, it looks like it doesn't matter if it is a network or local drive. Come on Apple, fix it, this is just ridiculous.

  • by Gaijin Kuma,

    Gaijin Kuma Gaijin Kuma Dec 4, 2015 8:18 AM in response to andrewlikesthesun
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 4, 2015 8:18 AM in response to andrewlikesthesun

    Still no luck. I've been unable to solve this issue with my iMac. I tried a number of things that I thought might help, but didn't:

    1) Rebuilt Spotlight indexes

    2) Cleanup TimeMachine exclude list

    3) Eliminated the ReadyNAS and used only the TimeCapsule

    4) Connected iMac directly to TimeCapsule instead of through an attached ethernet switch

    5) Change iMac Ethernet's MTU size back from jumbo 9000 to standard 1500

    6) Manually deleted old backup file from TimeCapsule

    7) Disabled encryption of the TimeMachine backup

     

    I was able to backup to a directly attached USB3 drive. The problem to the TimeCpasule is at times intermittent because I did get 1 fast backup during my testing but then tried to reproduce it and could not. I'm currently in my 4th day of a full backup (~450GB) and it's got 3 hours to completion - so it isn't a complete hang. (I also have 2 MacBooks that backup to this TimeCapsule without issue, so the issue isn't with that hardware)

     

    Other things I may try are:

    1) Install El Capitan onto a USB drive and see if it can backup the full system

    2) Reinstall El Capitan onto the iMac

  • by j4kp07,

    j4kp07 j4kp07 Dec 10, 2015 3:40 PM in response to coutts99
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 10, 2015 3:40 PM in response to coutts99
    What worked for me was to delete .Spotlight-V100 and .fseventsd from the root of my drive.

     

    This worked for me.

     

    I received an error shortly into the following backup, so I used "Select Disk" from within Time Machine to reselect the drive in question.  TM then prompted me if I wanted to create a new back or continue with the previous backup.  I choose "New" and it works like a charm now.  IMHO, TM wants to create a mounted volume (transparent to the user) and the issue stems somewhere within that process.  Removing the files mentioned by coutts99 and the reselection of the drive in TM seems to initiate a new backup and mount.

     

    I'm really becoming disappointed with Apple's Network/Time Capsule products.  The Airport Time Capsule is an over priced paper weight as far as I'm concerned and jumping through hoops for something as trivial as backing up data to a NAS is simply unacceptable.  Here's hoping I never encounter this error again or what would be the point of all these incremental backups?

  • by j4kp07,

    j4kp07 j4kp07 Dec 10, 2015 3:44 PM in response to Ale76
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 10, 2015 3:44 PM in response to Ale76

    I am using a Synology NAS as well.  Please see my previous post.  Hope this helps.

  • by bobngu,

    bobngu bobngu Dec 10, 2015 6:44 PM in response to j4kp07
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 10, 2015 6:44 PM in response to j4kp07

    Yeah same here but in my case, I deleted the existing backup and restart fresh and it is going a lot faster so far, hopefully it'll continue after the initial backup.

  • by R C-R,

    R C-R R C-R Dec 10, 2015 7:38 PM in response to j4kp07
    Level 6 (17,660 points)
    Dec 10, 2015 7:38 PM in response to j4kp07

    j4kp07 wrote:

    I'm really becoming disappointed with Apple's Network/Time Capsule products.  The Airport Time Capsule is an over priced paper weight as far as I'm concerned and jumping through hoops for something as trivial as backing up data to a NAS is simply unacceptable.  Here's hoping I never encounter this error again or what would be the point of all these incremental backups?

    It doesn't have anything to do with the Time Capsule. It is just the residential network router your NAS is attached to. To work properly as a Time Machine backup device, the NAS must meet all of Apple's Time Machine Server Requirements. Regardless of NAS manufacturer claims to the contrary, few if any actually do. Many NAS manufacturers just include support for the basic AFP 2.x standard, & a few support 3.1 or above, but there is more to it than that.

  • by bobngu,

    bobngu bobngu Dec 10, 2015 7:44 PM in response to R C-R
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 10, 2015 7:44 PM in response to R C-R

    I disagree that it has to do with NAS providers not adhering to Apple's Time Machine Server Requirements, it seems to work fine with a fresh TM backup, this problem only occurred subsequently though no one seems to know why it deteriorated over time. In my case, the latest occurrence is due to me upgrading from OS X El Capitan 10.11.1 to 10.11.2. Now I have to delete the backup and start fresh. Argh! 

  • by R C-R,

    R C-R R C-R Dec 10, 2015 10:11 PM in response to bobngu
    Level 6 (17,660 points)
    Dec 10, 2015 10:11 PM in response to bobngu

    bobngu wrote:

     

    I disagree that it has to do with NAS providers not adhering to Apple's Time Machine Server Requirements, it seems to work fine with a fresh TM backup, this problem only occurred subsequently though no one seems to know why it deteriorated over time. In my case, the latest occurrence is due to me upgrading from OS X El Capitan 10.11.1 to 10.11.2. Now I have to delete the backup and start fresh. Argh!

    Disagree if you want but the symptoms you describe are completely consistent with a NAS that does not fully comply with Apple's requirements, particularly not or incorrectly supporting the lock & lock stealing requirements.

  • by bobngu,

    bobngu bobngu Dec 10, 2015 10:19 PM in response to R C-R
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 10, 2015 10:19 PM in response to R C-R

    Then how do you explain that the a fresh backup is much faster? If what you said is true, it should affect all backups, not just subsequent backups.

  • by R C-R,

    R C-R R C-R Dec 11, 2015 3:35 AM in response to bobngu
    Level 6 (17,660 points)
    Dec 11, 2015 3:35 AM in response to bobngu

    bobngu wrote:

    Then how do you explain that the a fresh backup is much faster? If what you said is true, it should affect all backups, not just subsequent backups.

    With a fresh backup, there is no previous session & thus no need for proper support of lock stealing, no need to refer to a replay cache, & so on.

  • by Gaijin Kuma,

    Gaijin Kuma Gaijin Kuma Dec 11, 2015 6:51 AM in response to bobngu
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 11, 2015 6:51 AM in response to bobngu

    Wouldn't be too hard on the Time Capsule, in my case I started having slow backups on both a Time Capsule and a NAS and even starting with fresh backups hasn't solve my issue. But I also don't think R C-R's quick-to-condemn-NAS approach is justified. My Netgear ReadyNAS has properly supported Time Machine for a long time (it isn't that hard really) and I've even performed a successful and necessary restore with it.

  • by Ale76,

    Ale76 Ale76 Dec 12, 2015 4:10 AM in response to j4kp07
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Dec 12, 2015 4:10 AM in response to j4kp07

    Thank you   I will look into it but I would like to avoid to play with system files if possible. For now I have ditched Time machine it doesn't work!!!

  • by Ale76,

    Ale76 Ale76 Dec 12, 2015 4:12 AM in response to bobngu
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Dec 12, 2015 4:12 AM in response to bobngu

    I agree NAS is not the issue not it is wifi or cable it is El capitan. But strangely it doesn't affect all users just some 

  • by erald1956,

    erald1956 erald1956 Dec 13, 2015 5:02 PM in response to andrewlikesthesun
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 13, 2015 5:02 PM in response to andrewlikesthesun

    Same problem upgraded to El Capitan and now it is slower than slow.(1 hour 1.8MB) this to my WD cloud NAS. Had no real problems before.

    So after reading the whole thread I just removed the disk, deleted the backup and re attached it. Now the backup is going fast again and is finished in a few hours (the initial backup via Gigabit ethernet). Seems there are difference in the way TM works in the different versions.

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