Q: Why is my Time Machine backup so slow?

This is fixed with Lion and won't be fixed for Snow Leopard. (At least according to the results of the radar bug report I filed with Apple.) Note that even when you do update to Lion it will still take a very long time to delete the old backups that have this problem as they have many extra linked files. So once all of the old messed-up backups rotate out it will be fast again.

There's no safe way to avoid having this happen again under Snow Leopard. I tried re-installs, re-formatting backups, changing backup sets, changing drives, etc. Nothing worked permanently. Updating to Lion did fix it and I have not had the problem since.

That's discouraging. You tried reinstalling and using the 10.6.7 combo updater rather than 10.6.8?

Any hint about what causes the problem? It wasn't always this way for me.

Lion is looking more attractive. I was waiting for Quicken to release their Q2007 for Lion update.

Thanks,

Steve

hi tom

I didn't read all posts, but want to give my two cents...

I have a TC with a 3TB HD. With the latest Firmware (7.6.1) I had really really bad fun. I downgraded to 7.6 (the Airport Utility can do that) and it now runs like a charm.

Could this help?

Thanks, Ralph. Not relevant in my case -- no Time Capsule. Just a firewire 800 drive.

Same issue for me. SSD used as my boot and applications drive. Three internal drives (two 1Tb and one 2Tb) full of photos and a detachable 1Tb drive for Documents, email and other critical data. I do have tons of data, but ****... Time Machine estimates a WEEK for the first backup. Here's the on-screen shot from my first Time Machine backup (to a network connected Drobo FS)

The widget says:

Starting standard backup

Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://tom@Drobo-FS.local/Backups

Mounted network destination at mountpoint: /Volumes/Backups using URL: afp://tom@Drobo-FS.local/Backups

Creating disk image /Volumes/Backups/Mac Pro Tom.sparsebundle

Failed to hide extension on /Volumes/Backups/Mac Pro Tom.sparsebundle, error: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4 "The file “Mac Pro Tom.sparsebundle” doesn’t exist." UserInfo=0x7f87386028d0 {NSURL=file://localhost/Volumes/Backups/Mac%20Pro%20Tom.sparsebundle/, NSFilePath=/Volumes/Backups/Mac Pro Tom.sparsebundle, NSUnderlyingError=0x7f8738602c90 "The operation couldn’t be completed. No such file or directory"}.

QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN

Disk image /Volumes/Backups/Mac Pro Tom.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups

Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

Ownership is disabled on the backup destination volume.  Enabling.

Backup content size: 1283.7 GB excluded items size: 476 KB for volume Terabyte3

Backup content size: 206.4 GB excluded items size: 1.9 GB for volume Macintosh SSD

Backup content size: 239.8 GB excluded items size: 2.1 GB for volume Schonhoff 1Tb

Backup content size: 837.5 GB excluded items size: 7.5 MB for volume Terabyte1

Backup content size: 897.6 GB excluded items size: 344 KB for volume Terabyte2

4.06 TB required (including padding), 7.81 TB available

Waiting for index to be ready (101)

Copied 24.5 GB of 3461.0 GB, 1836 of 2683310 items

Copied 47.1 GB of 3461.0 GB, 3577 of 2683310 items

Copied 68.1 GB of 3461.0 GB, 5054 of 2683310 items

Copied 88.9 GB of 3461.0 GB, 7588 of 2683310 items

Copied 109.1 GB of 3461.0 GB, 10855 of 2683310 items

Copied 129.1 GB of 3461.0 GB, 13930 of 2683310 items

Copied 148.8 GB of 3461.0 GB, 16968 of 2683310 items

Copied 168.5 GB of 3461.0 GB, 19255 of 2683310 items

Copied 188.0 GB of 3461.0 GB, 21456 of 2683310 items

outermagnolian wrote:

. . .

Here's the on-screen shot from my first Time Machine backup (to a network connected Drobo FS)

Actually, that's about right.   Backups done via Ethernet run at, very roughly, about 20-24 GB/hour.  You have 4 TB, which does work out to 200 hours or 8.3 days.

And the messages bear that out; it's backed-up 188 GB in 9 hours, or 20.8 GB/hour.

Some of the things in the green box of #D2 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting might help a bit, but if

you want faster backups, you need a faster pipe.  USB runs at perhaps 40-50 GB/hour;  F/W 400 at 50-55 GB/hour; F/W 800 at roughly 80-90 GB/hour (I've not tested Thunderbolt).

An update, if anybody is still following this -- and a strange one.

I decided against reinstalling the OS and bringing up only to 10.6.7 -- at least for the moment. I will be on Lion one of these days and am in the middle of a big project and didn't want to risk a big change. I've been using TM when I wasn't working at the computer (if you turn off TM, you can still select "Back Up Now"). Back ups were taking about 45 minutes or more, and were backing up about 190,000 files.

I just checked  Backup Buddy and roughly a week ago, for no reason that I can fathom, everything started working normally again. Backups are now taking 4-8 minutes and backing up about 85,000 files. This is as good as it's ever been.

The funny thing is that I can't figure out what happened. I did a full SuperDuper backup the morning before things changed, which means that I probably repaired permissions and ran Cocktail. But I've done that many times before and it seemed to have no effect on TM.

So now it's even more of a mystery -- but I am a happy camper!

Thanks again to everybody participating here, for your help.

Steve

Following this hint to force restart Finder worked for me http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20100201062908134

Without quitting the Time Machine session, I just closed everything running on my Mac - I also removed the Backup volume from the sidebar in Finder, closed all Finder windows.

It took 12 hours to backup 45GB, and now it's backup the next 10GB in 10 minutes!

Hope this helps someone else.

I've been having a similar issue...  using a non-SSD MacBook Pro with a Time Capsule.  Last night, it took three hours to complete a backup of less than 5GB.  Nothing seemed to be "wrong," per se, but this is getting ridiculous as TM keeps slowing down.  The backups seem to stall out a lot as well, but I have a full WiFi signal on my MBP, and my wife's MBP completes its backups in no time at all also over WiFi.  Any thoughts?

Apr 4 20:58:44 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://Subspace-Time-Capsule.local/Data

Apr 4 20:58:53 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Mounted network destination at mount point: /Volumes/Data using URL: afp://Subspace-Time-Capsule.local/Data

Apr 4 20:59:01 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Disk image /Volumes/Data/The Electric Mayhem IX.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups

Apr 4 20:59:02 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

Apr 4 20:59:53 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

Apr 4 21:00:41 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Using file event preflight for Hard Drive

Apr 4 21:01:59 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Will copy (918.4 MB) from Hard Drive

Apr 4 21:06:24 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Found 392 files (2.33 GB) needing backup

Apr 4 21:06:32 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: 4.66 GB required (including padding), 131.37 GB available

Apr 4 22:00:41 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Copied 2.31 GB of 2.33 GB, 7986 of 7986 items

Apr 4 22:26:30 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Copied 16902 files (2.39 GB) from volume Hard Drive.

Apr 4 22:26:35 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Using file event preflight for Hard Drive

Apr 4 22:27:01 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Will copy (742.9 MB) from Hard Drive

Apr 4 22:27:01 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Found 594 files (1.64 GB) needing backup

Apr 4 22:27:01 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: 3.84 GB required (including padding), 131.31 GB available

Apr 4 23:07:22 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Copied 13639 files (1.65 GB) from volume Hard Drive.

Apr 4 23:07:34 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Created new backup: 2012-04-04-230731

Apr 4 23:47:37 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Starting post-backup thinning

Apr 4 23:58:59 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Deleted /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/The Electric Mayhem IX/2012-04-02-134028 (12 MB)

Apr 4 23:58:59 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed

Apr 4 23:59:05 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Backup completed successfully.

Apr 4 23:59:05 The-Electric-Mayhem-IX com.apple.backupd[323]: Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

Responded to your other thread, in the other forum. 

(Beta software is not to be discussed here, per your NDA.)

Painful experience with Time Machine.

My hard drive on my macbook pro needed to be swapped out by Apple and now my backups have been going crazy slow.  I decided to go a complete erase of my TC and my backups are still incredibly slow.  I'm not getting any errors.  The backups are working but it is slow slow slow.  A 20MB backup takes about 45 minutes - that is even after a fresh backup.  The initial backup goes very smooth.

Any suggestions.

Before I had my HDD replaced my incremental backups were never taking longer than 10 minutes and usually closer to 5.

Even my backups overnight are taking 45 minutes - nothing is running.

I have completely excluded Parallels. 

Thanks

this takes 45 minutes

Starting standard backup

Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://Alan%20Kaplan@Repak-Time-Capsule.local/Repak%20Time%20Capsule

Mounted network destination using URL: afp://Alan%20Kaplan@Repak-Time-Capsule.local/Repak%20Time%20Capsule

QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN

Disk image /Volumes/Repak Time Capsule/Alan Kaplan’s Computer.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups

Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

No pre-backup thinning needed: 518.4 MB requested (including padding), 359.32 GB available

Copied 57825 files (17.4 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

No pre-backup thinning needed: 517.6 MB requested (including padding), 359.13 GB available

Copied 25799 files (12.8 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

Starting post-backup thinning

No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist

Backup completed successfully.

Ejected Time Machine disk image.

Ejected Time Machine network volume.

The backups start very slow 1KB, 2 KB, 3 KB then when it gets to about 100KB it starts moving faster.  Its the start of the backups which moves at a snails pace.

What version of OSX are you running?

Are these backups done via WIFI or Ethernet?  If WIFI, what happens if you connect via Ethernet?

Make sure your internal HD is ok -- verify it, per #6 in Using Disk Utility.

Try the other things in the green box of #D2 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Wow -- you are fast -- thanks for the reply.

10.6.8 -- after all of the trouble backing up I did a reinstall using my DVD and then using the group update you suggested to get back to .8

In the past WIFI -- once I started having trouble I have moved to ethernet -- still problems -- faster, but not even close to where I was in the past.

My internal and TC drives both check out ok.

Try the other things in the green box of #D2.

If nothing else helps, you might have the problem a few folks have had on 10.6.8;  reinstalling OSX and only going back to 10.6.7, not 10.6.8, solved it for some of them.

In there any reason why you suggest going back to 10.6.7 vs going to 10.7?

I think I would rather go forward than backward.

I did everything in the green box. I'm out of options.

Thanks again for your help. I really appreciate it. Very cool.