Time Machine backup very slow in Lion

The backup is slow but it works, so I will just let Apple take care of this.

I wonder if it has something to do with Filevault and/or using an encrypted HD as your backup. I got 39MB into a backup (out of 228GB) out of an hour and a half. I miss my fast Snow Leopard backups.

I wonder if it has something to do with Filevault and/or using an encrypted HD as your backup.

Neither case apply to me.

Can we create a matrix to eliminate what doesn't seem to cause it?

I.e., if the slow down happens with a single disk, or someone is getting good speed with multiple disks, we can mark Multiple Disks as BUSTED.

Millone64 wrote:

Hi,

has someone tested this solution:

http://maurodelrio.com/2011/07/24/fix-lion-slow-timemachine-backups/

I am asking because we need several results to understand if this is really working.

Thanks

I tried it and it didn't work, TM is still very slow - but at least it seems to work. The only suspicious thing I find in the logs is:

Aug 23 05:48:45 aroma mds[69]: (Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume

I tried it too. All it did was add another day while Spotlight rebuilt the index on my disk. TM was no faster.

I have had the same issue, after installing Lion and a new 1tb hard drive in my MacBook Pro I wanted to carry on using time machine, but there seemed to be an issue with the cloned drive not being the same and it was an issue for time machine.

I started a new external hard drive and time machine. It was going to take 3 days to back up 260gb!!!

I let this run for a 2 days and a night and it only got to 80gb. I then stopped it, did something else and when I re-attached the hardrive it said it would take 2 hours. I left it overnight and it was done by the morning.

I can't explain it, but that was my experience.

I've got 2 Macbook Pro's (2008 and 2009 models) that upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion. Both took a LOOOONG time to get through the initial round of Time Machine backups, spotlight indexing, time machine indexing, etc... now, a few weeks later, the backups are working flawlessly. Nice and quick.

I also have a buddy's 2011 iMac, new installation of Lion (no upgrade) and it backed up the entire 40gb drive in about 20 minutes over a 1GBPS network connection to a new time capsule.

So for me, both methods are working fine - new Lion installations, and Snow Leopard upgrades...

c2oxide wrote:

So for me, both methods are working fine - new Lion installations, and Snow Leopard upgrades...

You mentioned a new Time Capsule - were both backups to entirely new TM volumes? I'm backing up on top of my previous Snow Leopard backups. What's interesting, though, is that my new mac has two internal drives (iMac with 256GB SSD + 1TB HD). The SSD has the same name as the SL hard disk, so that backup is "on top of" the old backup from Snow Leopard. But the HD, which then only has been backed up since Lion, also takes unreasonably long time, despite the fact that it contains only about 230 GB of data that virtually never change.

For the new iMac that went onto a new Time Capsule, this was a new computer, new time capsule, Lion installed from the factory, it was super fast.

For the Macbook Pro's that were upgraded from Snow Leopard, these backups were done onto an existing time capsule drive. I'm guessing they took such a LOOONG time to backup because:

a. The OS upgrade itself, Lion's system files needed to overwrite SL on the time machine drive.

b. Lion includes the versioning / backups / "locking" features as well, so it must have added some extra baggage onto Time Machine backups now that Lion keeps multiple copies of files, self-contained... and I'm guessing these are also backed through time machine somehow.

c2oxide:

So the backups that were done to the existing time capsule drive were done on top of the backup of an old computer, so backups from before the Lion install are accessible in the "space flight" interface of TM on the MacBooks? (You can have multiple backup volumes on one TC, so I just have to check if I understood you right)

About your point b) - this does not apply to me, I had no versions database at all before you reminded me of that feature right now. The versions database was created when I saved a document from TextEdit.

Yes, with my MacBook's, I can access both Snow-Leopard and Lion backups through the "space flight" interface... my time capsule backs up 3 computers and I just checked to see how far back they go... it gave me back to February 2011 (6 months) which was well before Lion came out.

Espen Vestre wrote:

I tried it and it didn't work, TM is still very slow - but at least it seems to work. The only suspicious thing I find in the logs is:

Aug 23 05:48:45 aroma mds[69]: (Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume

Still trying to figure out this error. In the meantime, I've discovered that TM is hunting phantoms: I had a look at

/Volumes/<my TM disk>/Backups.backupdb/<my machine>/<time of last backup>/.Backup.log

And discovered that one of the reasons that it's constantly re-iterating backups is this:

"Needs new backup due to change in /Volumes/Dinosaur/More Userdata"

But "More Userdata" doesn't exist anymore. I might have renamed it, but the last time that folder had that name was a week ago.

It also discoveres changes in the main disk ("/") which is OK, since even when I'm away from the machine, some files will be changed there. What's NOT OK, is that each of the copies from each of the two disks takes 40-50 minutes 😟

I am a graphic artist, and have a lot of large files. For example, a wall mural that I am currently working on now is a 1GB Photoshop file. Here is my experience with Lion and Time Machine.

Prior to two weeks ago I was using a Mac Pro (2008), Snow Leopard, and Intego Personal Backup to do my backups. I have used Personal Backup for years. I decided to start using Time Machine, and used it for about seven months, with a 1TB Western Digital external drive. No issues. Seemed to run fast enough. Backups after the initial backup were relatively quick. Only minutes.

Two weeks ago I bought a NEW iMac. It had Lion already installed. I purchased another 1TB drive, same as the first one on the Mac Pro. I was not using Personal Backup. Decided that Time Machine was sufficient. The first back up was slow, and expected to be so. But, now, two weeks later, they are still VERY slow. It takes at 45 minutes to do a backup. What used to take only a few minutes. And with an hourly schedule of backups it seems that Time Machine is almost always running.

Here is my system:

OS Lion 7.1

iMac 27 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7 with 8GB RAM

Internal 250GB SSD

Internal 1TB SATA Disk

External 1TB Western Digital (Time Machine backup)

I had really come to like Time Machine under Snow Leopard. Under Lion? Well, I think I for one am going to abandon Time Machine and go back to Intego Personal Backup. The time it takes for Time Machine to do its thing is ridiculous!

Everytime you change that 1GB file TM will back it up anew. That is your problem if you are working with VERY LARGE files. TM is great for regular files and system backup; crash recovery is very simple with TM. So I suggest you exclude your "media files" directory from TM backup in OPTIONS and then use your other tool to backup only "media files". You should have the best of both worlds then. Cheers.

Did you try deleting the Spotlight Index so it builds fresh?