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User profile for user: Blade0817
Blade0817 Author
User level: Level 1
40 points

TimeMachine backup drive slowing down

The more I use my backup drive for TimeMachine the slower it is getting, at this point it takes literally 5 minutes just to show up after connecting to the computer and it's getting slower and slower. This is not a new issue, I already reformatted this drive several months ago for the same reason now it's doing the exact same, the more backups are on it the slower it is getting. It is a regular HD drive (not SSD) and I do weekly backups with it. Anyone else having the same or similar problem, and why is this happening? I am on OS 13 now but this was the same with OS 12 as well, also this is my second (newer) laptop since this started, so not OS or computer related issue.

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 13.0

Posted on Nov 11, 2022 8:52 AM

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User profile for user: Grant Bennet-Alder
Grant Bennet-Alder
User level: Level 10
127,891 points

Posted on Nov 11, 2022 10:04 AM

What you are describing is late-life behavior for a Rotating Magnetic drive that is getting ready to fail completely. The next time you erase it so fix bad blacks, it could fail to initialize properly.


The typical failure mechanism when a drive gets older is that it starts to experience a few marginal blocks. Re-reading them to get good data can take a up to a quarter minute (worst case) per block. As the drive gets older, bad blocks snowball -- it accumulates more and more and more bad blocks and get slower and slower.


Think about getting its replacement soon. You can add it as an additional Time Machine backup destination, and Time Machine will create a new stand-alone backup on the new drive (starting from today) while continuing the other back up on the old drive. Every other backup goes to every other drive.



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User profile for user: Grant Bennet-Alder
Grant Bennet-Alder
User level: Level 10
127,891 points

Nov 11, 2022 10:04 AM in response to Blade0817

What you are describing is late-life behavior for a Rotating Magnetic drive that is getting ready to fail completely. The next time you erase it so fix bad blacks, it could fail to initialize properly.


The typical failure mechanism when a drive gets older is that it starts to experience a few marginal blocks. Re-reading them to get good data can take a up to a quarter minute (worst case) per block. As the drive gets older, bad blocks snowball -- it accumulates more and more and more bad blocks and get slower and slower.


Think about getting its replacement soon. You can add it as an additional Time Machine backup destination, and Time Machine will create a new stand-alone backup on the new drive (starting from today) while continuing the other back up on the old drive. Every other backup goes to every other drive.



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TimeMachine backup drive slowing down

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