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Time Machine Bogs Down System

I have an Imac with 2.5G Ram. Processor is Power PC. Hard Drive 250 with 80 GB currently free.

My external back up disk is an Iomega 500GB connected via USB.

When time machine starts and I monitor its CPU usage it ranges between 30 and 60%. If I running a memory intensive program on Safari my computer becomes nearly unusable.

The other issue it seems to take Time Machine almost an hour to prepare backup, backup and finish backup which means a backup is almost always running.

Any suggestions or tips as I want to keep the backups running?

Thanks,

Imac g5, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Apr 17, 2009 2:51 PM

33 replies

brd1207 Author

Level 1

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Apr 21, 2009 5:16 PM in response to Pondini

Hi,

Confirming that no virus software installed.
I transferred a 456MB file in less than 1 minute in both directions.

Here is TM log from 2nd TM run. 1 hr 1 minutes

Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Iomega HDD/Backups.backupdb
Node requires deep traversal:/Users/BrynD/Pictures/iPhoto Library reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonMissedReservation|
No pre-backup thinning needed: 2.16 GB requested (including padding), 195.70 GB available
Copied 124289 files (13.1 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 2.13 GB requested (including padding), 195.68 GB available
Copied 63054 files (1.6 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
Deleted backup /Volumes/Iomega HDD/Backups.backupdb/Bryn Dearborn’s iMac G5/2009-04-15-054456: 195.68 GB now available
Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Apr 21, 2009 5:36 PM in response to brd1207

brd1207 wrote:

I transferred a 456MB file in less than 1 minute in both directions.

Ok; that's reasonably fast (much less than the theoretical F/W 400 rating, of course). I just did a 255 mb via F/W 400 in about 10 seconds, so your drive seems ok. (And you can delete the two extra files).

Here is TM log from 2nd TM run. 1 hr 1 minutes

Node requires deep traversal:/Users/BrynD/Pictures/iPhoto Library reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonMissedReservation|

Now there's a new one. I have no idea what that means, except something strange happened with OSX's File System, which is probably not good. 😟 Again the "deep traversal" could have taken quite a while.

You did not mention if you'd done a +Verify Disk+ on your internal HD per my previous post. If you haven't, that might be a good thing to do now, as this new message might be a clue:

On occasion, doing a Verify Disk (not permissions) on the boot drive (via Disk Utility, in your Applications/Utilities folder) will show errors. If so, you must boot from your Leopard Install disc and use it's copy of DU to do a Repair Disk since you can't repair the disk you're running from

While you're at it, you might also do a +Repair Disk+ on your TM drive (you can do that with the one in your Applications/Utilities folder).

Post back if the Verify on your internal shows errors and you don't know how to do the Repair.

Apr 22, 2009 8:05 AM in response to brd1207

Try to run disk utility and verify the TM disk.

brd1207 Author

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Apr 22, 2009 12:02 PM in response to pardthemonster

The verify disk on the TM Iomega Disk has been running for four hours...It seems to be stuck on 31 minutes running. I can hear the disk working so something is happening. Do I just let it run and run?

I did a verify and repair on my internal hard drive about two weeks without issue.

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Apr 22, 2009 12:08 PM in response to brd1207

brd1207 wrote:
The verify disk on the TM Iomega Disk has been running for four hours...It seems to be stuck on 31 minutes running. I can hear the disk working so something is happening. Do I just let it run and run?

You're wasting your time doing +Verify Disk+ on an external drive. If it finds errors, you'll then have to run +Repair Disk+ which will do the same thing, except attempt to fix any errors it finds.

That's why I suggested you do the Verify on your internal and Repair on the TM drive:

On occasion, doing a Verify Disk (not permissions) on the boot drive (via Disk Utility, in your Applications/Utilities folder) will show errors. If so, you must boot from your Leopard Install disc and use it's copy of DU to do a Repair Disk since you can't repair the disk you're running from

While you're at it, you might also do a Repair Disk on your TM drive (you can do that with the one in your Applications/Utilities folder).

brd1207 Author

Level 1

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Apr 22, 2009 12:12 PM in response to brd1207

I am doing the repair on the TM disk not verify. Bad wording on my part.

Should I let the repair keep going?

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Apr 22, 2009 12:16 PM in response to brd1207

brd1207 wrote:
I am doing the repair on the TM disk not verify. Bad wording on my part.

Should I let the repair keep going?

Yes.

And do a +Verify DIsk+ on your internal. The message you got

(Node requires deep traversal:/Users/BrynD/Pictures/iPhoto Library reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonMissedReservation|)

indicates some sort of problem in the file system on your internal HD. Whether DU can find and/or fix it I don't know, but something went wrong there.

Apr 22, 2009 6:35 PM in response to Pondini

For me, there are many problems with the sparsebundle. Thousands of:

dev/rdisk2s2: (E,"(It should be %@ instead of %@)",2)
/dev/rdisk2s2: 98132750
/dev/rdisk2s2: 94010099
/dev/rdisk2s2: (E,"Previous ID in a hard link chain is incorrect (id = %@)",1)
/dev/rdisk2s2: 98132750
/dev/rdisk2s2: (E,"(It should be %@ instead of %@)",2)
/dev/rdisk2s2: 96097245
/dev/rdisk2s2: 100254613
/dev/rdisk2s2: (E,"Next ID in a hard link chain is incorrect (id = %@)",1)
/dev/rdisk2s2: 98132750
/dev/rdisk2s2: (E,"(It should be %@ instead of %@)",2)
/dev/rdisk2s2: 100254613
/dev/rdisk2s2: 96097245

in /var/log/fsck_hfs.log (which is what drives the display of the little scrolling window in Disk Utility). This display significantly slows down the process -- I've unchecked "Show Details" and I'm just tailing the /var/log/fsck_hfs.log to keep up. It's more informative anyway.

There were also file hardlink errors, incorrect Extended Attributes, incorrect number of directory hardlinks, Volume Bit Map needs minor repair, Invalid volume file count, Invalid volume directory count, and Invalid volume free block count.

Just about every kind of HFS problem fsck can correct.

Clearly something is completely hosed in the hard link structure:

byakhee-2:~ groo$ grep 'Next ID' /var/log/fsck_hfs.log | wc -l
8593
byakhee-2:~ groo$ grep 'Previous ID' /var/log/fsck_hfs.log | wc -l
7932

And that's only so far... I'm not terribly confident this is going to be properly repaired. It may be time to start with a fresh backup.

Apr 22, 2009 6:37 PM in response to Bill Squier

I should also mention my backup device is a Time Capsule (1TB).

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Apr 22, 2009 6:41 PM in response to Bill Squier

Bill Squier wrote:

And that's only so far... I'm not terribly confident this is going to be properly repaired. It may be time to start with a fresh backup.

With that much wrong, I'd be real suspicious of the drive. 😟

Apr 22, 2009 6:54 PM in response to Pondini

Pondini wrote:
With that much wrong, I'd be real suspicious of the drive. 😟

Possibly -- but let's remember the number of layers at work here:

1. The disk drive itself is formatted as <who knows what>.
2. That file system stores 8MB band files in a directory called <host>_<macaddr>.sparsebundle (per host backed up to it)
3. The MBP mounts that file system remotely via AFP.
4. The MBP then mounts as a disk image, the directory <host>_<macaddr>.sparsebundle as a special version of HFS+ that supports directory hard links.

Leaving all of the error detection and correction of the drive itself (SMART), you would expect a horribly damaged underlying time capsule disk drive to cause serious errors in the <who knows what> file system, making it difficult or impossible to read all the various 8MB band files in the sparsebundle directory. (and that's just for the bad blocks that get past SMART)

Moreover, you would expect that my two other Macs that back up to this time capsule (a Mac Mini and a G4 TiBook) to have equally bad interactions with Time Machine (they do not).

I'm unsure whether the 8MB sparsebundle bands themselves contain checksums or hashes of some sort to verify their integrity as well -- that would add another layer of improbability.

So while I'm not ruling out a bad drive as a possibility, it seems unlikely given the layers of technology involved here.

brd1207 Author

Level 1

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Apr 22, 2009 8:05 PM in response to Pondini

Hi,

My repair finally finished with no errors. I did verify on the internal drive and it had no errors as well.

This is the report of the verify disk for the TM disk....Number of files 11million seems like a lot....

Mount Point : /Volumes/Iomega HDD Capacity : 465.6 GB (499,972,702,208 Bytes)
Format : Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Available : 194.2 GB (208,497,254,400 Bytes)
Owners Enabled : Yes Used : 271.5 GB (291,475,447,808 Bytes)
Number of Folders : 403,325 Number of Files : 11,456,602

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Apr 22, 2009 8:21 PM in response to brd1207

brd1207 wrote:

This is the report of the verify disk for the TM disk....Number of files 11million seems like a lot....

Not for 270 GB of backups. Mine is 53 GB, with 1.7 million.

Well, that's good news, in that both your drives seem healthy 🙂 but we're still not sure what's causing your TM problems. 😟

The next most likely possibility is something wrong/corrupted in OSX. The first step to try to fix that is downloading and installing the 10.5.6 "combo" update. This is a consolidation of all the updates since the original release of Leopard. It's a big one (668 MB), but should fix anything that went wrong in on of your previous "point" updates. Info and download available at: http://support.apple.com/downloads/MacOS_X_10-5-6_ComboUpdate

After you install it, don't delete it. If this doesn't help, the next step will be an Archive and Install, and you'll need to install the combo again after that. Hopefully, it won't come to that.

brd1207 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 25, 2009 4:19 PM in response to Pondini

Hi,

After combo install problem is definitely not better but on the worse side.

Here are the logs from the three post combo backups...

1. 2 hrs 25 minutes

Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Iomega HDD/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonEventDBUntrustable|
No pre-backup thinning needed: 4.41 GB requested (including padding), 194.12 GB available
Unable to rebuild path cache for source item. Partial source path:
Copied 172790 files (1.9 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 2.13 GB requested (including padding), 192.02 GB available
Copied 90707 files (1.1 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Backup deletion was canceled by user
Starting post-backup thinning
Backup completed successfully.

2. 2 hrs. 48 minutes

Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Iomega HDD/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 2.13 GB requested (including padding), 191.99 GB available
Unable to rebuild path cache for source item. Partial source path:
Copied 107714 files (7.7 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 2.13 GB requested (including padding), 191.98 GB available
Copied 84477 files (674 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
Deleted backup /Volumes/Iomega HDD/Backups.backupdb/Bryn Dearborn’s iMac G5/2009-03-25-001915: 192.03 GB now available
Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.

3. 2 hrs 15 minutes

Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/Iomega HDD/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 2.17 GB requested (including padding), 192.05 GB available
Copied 124833 files (33.8 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 2.13 GB requested (including padding), 192.01 GB available
Copied 73625 files (1.0 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
Deleted backup /Volumes/Iomega HDD/Backups.backupdb/Bryn Dearborn’s iMac G5/2009-03-24-004906: 192.29 GB now available
Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.

Should I erase my TM drive and start over?

Bryn

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Apr 25, 2009 5:14 PM in response to brd1207

brd1207 wrote:

Should I erase my TM drive and start over?

I don't think it will help, but it won't hurt, either (except for losing all the backups).

I think it's Archive & Install time. 😟

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Time Machine Bogs Down System