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Macbook Pro freezes in Time Machine

2009 Macbook pro freezes on time machine

Posted on Aug 17, 2019 9:10 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 17, 2019 12:33 PM

If this is your very first backup, or if you have not run Time Machine backup for more than two or three days, too many Folders have changed and Time Machine must do a "deep traversal". This typically takes four hours or more, just to compute what files have changed, before a single file is copied.


If you allow Time Machine to run more often, it uses a system data structure called the File System Event Store (which is finite in size) to tell which folders have changed Recently, and copying files can proceed almost immediately.


Time Machine's "claim to fame" is that it runs in the background, at low priority, so that you can keep doing your important work without interruption.


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The question about your Drive is fishing for whether your drive is getting so old and slow -- typically due to developing Bad Blocks -- that it could be slowing down the entire backup process.


Re-reading a Bad Block that comes clean at the last possible moment can take an additional quarter minute for each such block.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 17, 2019 12:33 PM in response to deshaunp314

If this is your very first backup, or if you have not run Time Machine backup for more than two or three days, too many Folders have changed and Time Machine must do a "deep traversal". This typically takes four hours or more, just to compute what files have changed, before a single file is copied.


If you allow Time Machine to run more often, it uses a system data structure called the File System Event Store (which is finite in size) to tell which folders have changed Recently, and copying files can proceed almost immediately.


Time Machine's "claim to fame" is that it runs in the background, at low priority, so that you can keep doing your important work without interruption.


--------

The question about your Drive is fishing for whether your drive is getting so old and slow -- typically due to developing Bad Blocks -- that it could be slowing down the entire backup process.


Re-reading a Bad Block that comes clean at the last possible moment can take an additional quarter minute for each such block.

Macbook Pro freezes in Time Machine

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