arizonadonn

Q: Sierra and Time Machine

Hi.

 

So I upgraded to Sierra yesterday morning.

 

Time Machine has been stuck since.

 

It's stuck on 'Preparing Backup'.

 

It's been about 18 hours.

 

At what point should I worry? And suggestions on a fix?

 

Don

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1)

Posted on Sep 21, 2016 6:21 PM

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Q: Sierra and Time Machine

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  • by Old Coog,

    Old Coog Old Coog Sep 23, 2016 10:43 AM in response to arizonadonn
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 23, 2016 10:43 AM in response to arizonadonn

    Just tried what arizonadonn suggested (turning off Spotlight indexing of Time Machine drive), and the backup has speeded up noticeably. It's now projected to complete in 21 hours. This is a fresh backup of the entire HD, since I erased the TM drive after making a copy of the system HD with Super Duper.

  • by arizonadonn,

    arizonadonn arizonadonn Sep 23, 2016 1:12 PM in response to Old Coog
    Level 1 (41 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 23, 2016 1:12 PM in response to Old Coog

    Hi.

     

    Update as well.

     

    It worked. My drive is now indexed and backed up.

     

    Don

  • by jurkuipers,

    jurkuipers jurkuipers Sep 23, 2016 1:18 PM in response to arizonadonn
    Level 1 (18 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 23, 2016 1:18 PM in response to arizonadonn

    Congratulations.

    You nailed it!

     

    Jur Kuipers, The Netherlands.

  • by michaelfromhatfield,Helpful

    michaelfromhatfield michaelfromhatfield Sep 23, 2016 2:47 PM in response to arizonadonn
    Level 1 (18 points)
    Sep 23, 2016 2:47 PM in response to arizonadonn

    Hi, I had the same issue with extremely slow time machine backup after upgrading to Sierra. For me the issue wasn't indexing of backup drive. The issue was antivirus software. I use Sophos home for mac, 1.2. I turned this off and suddenly Time machine is now backing up like a a rocket ship.

     

    Try turning off your anti-virus app if time machine is slowed to a crawl on Sierra. Remember to turn it back on after backup.

     

    perhaps Sophos needs an update since Sierra was released??

  • by arizonadonn,

    arizonadonn arizonadonn Sep 23, 2016 2:53 PM in response to michaelfromhatfield
    Level 1 (41 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 23, 2016 2:53 PM in response to michaelfromhatfield

    HI.

     

    im not using any antivirus software.

     

    Update.

     

    backup stalled again this morning.

     

    Engineering suggested I erase the backup drive.

     

    I Did so.

     

    backup is now working again.

     

    DOn

  • by Kebec,

    Kebec Kebec Sep 23, 2016 5:36 PM in response to arizonadonn
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Sep 23, 2016 5:36 PM in response to arizonadonn

    I had the same issue TM was stuck for hours preparing backup, then stuck after backing up... 750kb ! TM appears to be up and running now, here is what I did:

    1. Reset the SMC/PMU as per instructions given by @
    2. added my TM disk to Spotlight's privacy list, then removed it
    3. Removed my TM disk from the list of TM disks, then added it back
    4. rebooted with the TM disk plugged in, waited until Spotlight was done with it (monitored through Activity Monitor, mds processes).

    So far so good

  • by AvoOhanian,

    AvoOhanian AvoOhanian Sep 24, 2016 12:03 AM in response to arizonadonn
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 24, 2016 12:03 AM in response to arizonadonn

    Don't know if this is related, but my clean install (created a USB boot drive and completely wiped my iMac HDD) would start the Time Machine backup and constantly stall at around the 170Gb mark. No error messages, no failures reported.

     

    After some command line snooping (can't recall the exact web site I got the tmutil script from) it appeared that a Mail prefs file was always the last file listed before stalling. No matter how many times I stopped the backup and restarted it, the prefs file was listed at stall point.....

     

    Opened Mail whilst backup was stalled and Time Machine continued. Tested this 3 times and the only way my Time Machine would properly complete is if Mail was running during the initial backup. Subsequent backups continue with no issue so the prefs file doesn't appear to change once Mail is setup and seems to be locked when Mail is not running causing Time Machine to wait for it indefinitely until it is available to copy.

     

    Well, this worked for me.

  • by FredrikTT,

    FredrikTT FredrikTT Sep 24, 2016 1:38 AM in response to michaelfromhatfield
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 24, 2016 1:38 AM in response to michaelfromhatfield

    This solved my problem. Thanks.

  • by cfsdoriga,

    cfsdoriga cfsdoriga Sep 24, 2016 7:05 AM in response to FredrikTT
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 24, 2016 7:05 AM in response to FredrikTT

    Same issue here. I'll try with some of the options you guys suggest and will let you know.

  • by dave_six,

    dave_six dave_six Sep 24, 2016 7:52 AM in response to jurkuipers
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 24, 2016 7:52 AM in response to jurkuipers

    Executive Summary: Turn your virus checker off, then try a Time Machine backup.

    Very similar issues here... I tried everything I could think of, even moving disks to different USB ports, starting, stoping, etc. I'll spare everyone the details. Throughput rates on Time Machine were just terrible. 8 Hours of backing up and it had copied only 20Gigs of a 1TB backup. Transfer rates were in Kbps, not Mbps... While reading the above pondini.org site, and searching for clues, I found a comment about virus checkers... hummm.... that was it. I have Sophos AV loaded, and it appears to have been checking every single file as Time Machine was backing it up. Of course, that's just a guess as to what it was actually doing, but going into Sophos, and adding the Time Machine disk as an excluded item, and then turning it off during the initial backup fixed the problem for me. In 30 minutes time machine has backed up more than the last 8 hour run that I tried last night. It's now running at about a Gig per minute, so looking at a 16 hour backup, but on a new Sierra install with 1TB of backup to do, it's probably within reason. Hope this helps.

  • by Old Coog,

    Old Coog Old Coog Sep 24, 2016 8:02 AM in response to Old Coog
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 24, 2016 8:02 AM in response to Old Coog

    Finally got a good result.

    1. Disabled all Power Saver options to make the machine work through the night at full speed.

    2. Excluded Time Machine HDD from Spotlight indexing.

    3. Only running ClamX software; didn't touch it.

    4. Had already erased TM drive.

    5. Disabled scheduled Super Duper copy.

    6. Started TM backup at 11 pm, and went to bed.

     

    Next morning woke to message that "First backup" had completed at 3:30 am.

    Ran another backup (440MB), took about 3 minutes. All seems to be working now.

  • by John Galt,

    John Galt John Galt Sep 24, 2016 8:12 AM in response to arizonadonn
    Level 8 (49,642 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 24, 2016 8:12 AM in response to arizonadonn

    arizonadonn wrote:

     

    It's stuck on 'Preparing Backup'.

     

    Please read macOS Sierra: If Time Machine remains in the “preparing” stage.

  • by Kaalass,

    Kaalass Kaalass Sep 24, 2016 8:22 AM in response to arizonadonn
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 24, 2016 8:22 AM in response to arizonadonn

    Tried that this morning.  Still stuck on "preparing back up" for an hour.  I will wait for the rest of the day to see if it resolves itself. 

  • by gvde,

    gvde gvde Sep 24, 2016 11:10 AM in response to dave_six
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Sep 24, 2016 11:10 AM in response to dave_six

    Same here: while sophos is running the backup hangs filling the logs with error "kernel[0]: AFP_VFS afpfs_vnop_ioctl: afpfs_FindForkRef failed -1".


    When I disable the online scanning of sophos get backups go through just fine.


    Oddly, it seems to affect only automatic backups. If I cancel a hanging backup and then start it manually the backups works, too.

  • by tiou,

    tiou tiou Sep 24, 2016 1:06 PM in response to arizonadonn
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 24, 2016 1:06 PM in response to arizonadonn

    Hi arizonadonn

     

    For the records... Exact same issue, no antivirus, have followed all steps recommended (except clean reinstall, which is so long I would use it only if there is really no other fix)... And no luck so far.

    Problem still there.

    Hoping Apple will add a patch in the next Sierra update.

    A bit frustrating!

    Thanks all for sharing all your tips.

    JB

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