Time Machine slow

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Time Machine slow

I just bought a new iMac. 27", i7, 256GB SSD and 2TB HD installed. I used to have a white DualCore iMac, and Time Machine would run just fine backing up to an external FireWire 800 2TB drive.

On the new machine, I restored my Time Machine backup of my photos, music, movies, etc to the HD. The os and applications all run from the SSD.

The initial TM backup seems to take an appropriately long period of time (850GB of data to back up). It completes the initial backup in about 4 hours. Subsequent backups take about 40 minutes, even though it may only be backing up a few KB or a few MB of data. When a subsequent backup starts, it prepares files at what seems to be an appropriate speed, then writing to the external drive seems to go ok, then it sits and churns for a several minutes. Then it does it all again (prepares and writes) and then finishes. The finishing takes several minutes as well.

I am not running antivirus software. I have reformatted both the internal and external drives and reinstalled the os twice. (The two reinstalls were the advice given me by AppleCare.) The presence/absence of MS Office 2008 on the SSD drive does not make any difference. Backing up to a USB drive doesn't make any difference.

Here's a Time Machine Buddy log for a typical subsequent backup. This one took 40 minutes:

Starting standard backup

Backing up to: /Volumes/Sarah Saturday/Backups.backupdb

No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.58 GB requested (including padding), 1.06 TB available

Copied 39245 files (121 KB) from volume KF XIV SSD2.

Copied 371120 files (123 KB) from volume KF XIV HD.

No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.58 GB requested (including padding), 1.06 TB available

Copied 39245 files (115 KB) from volume KF XIV SSD2.

Copied 371120 files (117 KB) from volume KF XIV HD.

Starting post-backup thinning

Deleted backup /Volumes/Sarah Saturday/Backups.backupdb/Matthew and Jennifer Smith’s iMac/2011-07-05-090121: 1.06 TB now available

Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed

Backup completed successfully.

Ideas?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Jul 6, 2011 8:53 PM

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Answer 1

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Jul 6, 2011 11:38 PM in response to mtsmithmd

See Pondini's Tips and FAQs.

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Answer 2

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 7, 2011 7:35 AM in response to mtsmithmd

mtsmithmd wrote:

. . .

The os and applications all run from the SSD.

There have been 3 or 4 threads here about strange problems with Time Machine backing-up an SSD and internal HD, even after doing all the usual troubleshooting things (which you seem to have done), and at least two have AppleCare working on it. Some involve oddly-duplicated and/or huge sizes and/or numbers of files in the "Copied" messages, as you got. So far, with only a few, no pattern has emerged.

Naturally, I can't find any of those threads at the moment (except for one that also involved a not-fully compatible 3rd-party NAS, which is suspect).

When a subsequent backup starts, it prepares files at what seems to be an appropriate speed, then writing to the external drive seems to go ok, then it sits and churns for a several minutes. Then it does it all again (prepares and writes) and then finishes. The finishing takes several minutes as well.

The "doing it again" is not unusual; if changes are made while a backup is running, Time Machine will make a "second pass" to catch up. (Normally, of course, that's small and quick.)

How did AppleCare leave this? Are they investigating, and will let you know? If you haven't heard anything in several days, call them back.

Sorry not to have a solution for you. 😟

Please keep us posted.

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Answer 3

mtsmithmd Author

Level 1

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Jul 7, 2011 7:28 PM in response to Pondini

AppleCare has actually tried about as well as they can so far. Unfortunately, my call with the senior advisor was interrupted by my 5 & 2 year old kids. Haven't been able to get to it this week again. Will try on Saturday. I'll post any solution that is found.

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Answer 4

david-se

Level 1

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Jul 9, 2011 7:12 AM in response to mtsmithmd

I am also experiencing exactly this issue on my mid 2011 27" iMac i7 with SSD/HD (booting from SSD).

The problem is that the backup is re-linking thousands of files every time it runs. E.g., files form /usr/share/man/man8 which have certainly not changed. For some reason it thinks the directories have changed (or something in them) and so it goes through and re-links every file in the directory. (Hence the large number of files, but small size.)

I've run disk utility on all the disks with no problems found. I've tried a second TimeMachine disk with no benefits.

The only thing that has (temporarily) seemed to work is deleting the .fseventsd folder at the root level and rebooting. This file tracks which files have changed so TimeMachine knows what to update. However, I did this on my two disks (SSD and HD) and it seemed to be fine for a while, but is now back. I will try doing it on my backup disk but this looks like a real problem.

Tools that help identify which files it is re-linking include timedog and TimeTracker. (Google them and you can try them out -- with timedog you have to run without the -l option to see all the files being extraneously linked.)

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Answer 5

david-se

Level 1

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Jul 9, 2011 8:33 AM in response to david-se

Deleting the .fseventsd directory from the backup disk did not help.

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Answer 6

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 9, 2011 8:40 AM in response to david-se

Here's another, much longer, thread, with 2 posters having similar problems: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3144862?tstart=0

I doubt there's much there that will help. At least one is also working with AppleCare.

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Answer 7

david-se

Level 1

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Jul 9, 2011 8:44 AM in response to david-se

timedog -- http://code.google.com/p/timedog/

TimeTracker -- http://www.charlessoft.com/

Run timedog as "sudo timedog -d 35" to see all the files that were re-linked.

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Answer 8

mtsmithmd Author

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Jul 24, 2011 1:26 PM in response to mtsmithmd

Just an update. I installed Lion, and the backups are now taking 8 minutes! Guess Apple fixed it with Lion.

Matt

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Answer 9

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 24, 2011 1:29 PM in response to mtsmithmd

mtsmithmd wrote:

Just an update. I installed Lion, and the backups are now taking 8 minutes! Guess Apple fixed it with Lion.

How much is being backed-up?

Are you still backing-up to the F/W 800 drive?

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Answer 10

babowa

Level 9

78,315 points

Jul 24, 2011 4:46 PM in response to Pondini

Pondini,

would you please take a look at this thread - the Time Machine questions are over my head........

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3205413?answerId=15727506022#15727506022

Thanks a lot!

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Answer 11

mtsmithmd Author

Level 1

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Jul 24, 2011 8:39 PM in response to Pondini

Yes. Still to the FW 800 drive. It seems to be backing up far fewer files, but also taking less time cleaning up at the end. If his helps in trying to figure out the differe,ce here's a recent log:

Starting standard backup

Backing up to: /Volumes/Sarah Saturday/Backups.backupdb

679.9 MB required (including padding), 1.00 TB available

Copied 558 files (5.7 MB) from volume KF XIV SSD2.

Copied 576 files (5.7 MB) from volume KF XIV HD.

673.1 MB required (including padding), 1.00 TB available

Copied 96 files (93 bytes) from volume KF XIV SSD2.

Copied 114 files (93 bytes) from volume KF XIV HD.

Starting post-backup thinning

Deleted /Volumes/Sarah Saturday/Backups.backupdb/Matthew and Jennifer Smith’s iMac/2011-07-20-232457 (22.8 MB)

Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed

Backup completed successfully.

This backup was completed in 2min 8 seconds.

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Answer 12

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 24, 2011 8:44 PM in response to mtsmithmd

That one seems reasonable. 🙂

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Answer 13

c2oxide

Level 1

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Jul 26, 2011 10:05 AM in response to mtsmithmd

I've got a few Macbook Pro's and a Mac Mini all backing up to my time capsule over WiFi. The mini hardly has anything on it and it was able to finish its backup the day after upgrading to OSX Lion. The Macbook Pro 15" took about 2 days. (2008 model)

My 17" Macbook Pro (2009 model) just finished backing up this morning, took 4 or 5 days to finally finish the backup. I wound up connecting with a CAT5e (1 gbps) between the macbook pro and time capsule to speed things up. Even with the 1gbps connection, it took almost 2 days to finish backing up this one. Phew!

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Answer 14

kjohnd

Level 1

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Aug 16, 2011 2:59 AM in response to mtsmithmd

I have had immense problems with slow back up using time machine on both my MacBook and MacBook Pro machines, using USB and over the network to iMac hosted drives. I found this post: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20100201062908134 - basically relaunch Finder - and the speed of data transfer went from 100kps to 5-10Mbps. Well worth a try.

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