Time Machine backup very slow in Lion

"One family member, running SL on a MBP, has just backed up 743GB. It took over a day via WiFi."

743GB is A LOT of data to push over Wi-FI with all the protocol overhead. I would expect 743GB to take very long over Wi-Fi. If this is media machine, backup your media files separately over the wire.

One thing I've noticed is that even though my back ups seem to be almost back to normal every once in a while it does an indexing. After that the Time Capsule will not eject right away but will eject after a back up maybe 6 or 7 hours later.

Apple could prevent a lot Time Capsule problems if it would eject the disk when not being accessed. If you backup over hardware Ethernet, make sure to Eject your Time Machine volume/disk before going Wireless. Otherwise, Spotlight will flipout.

EarthBased wrote:

Apple could prevent a lot Time Capsule problems if it would eject the disk when not being accessed. If you backup over hardware Ethernet, make sure to Eject your Time Machine volume/disk before going Wireless. Otherwise, Spotlight will flipout.

This is getting off topic for this thread, which is about Time Machine problems after upgrading to Lion. These problems apply to directly connected disks, too (I have a fast FW-connected disk).

(At home may family backs up 4 macs with Snow Leopard over wireless to a Time Capsule. They don't have any problems besides the usual TM pit falls (like incomplete iPhoto backups)), and they experience waaaaay faster backups than I experience with a fast FW800-connected disk when using Lion)

Last week I put a bigger hard drive into my 2007 MacBook. Because of that I am using a new and bigger WDElements hard drive for Time Machine backups. And now my Time Machine is blazing fast. Initial backup was about 40 mins and now hourly backups take about a minute.

And now Time Machine backups really happen in the background, mostly I am not aware that they are happening.

I am not a deep technical person, but I am a power user with a logical mind, and I think I know where the problem lies. At least here are my experiences:

Background:

• MacBook Pro (old black intel)
  • Originally with Leopard
  • Upgraded to Snow Leopard
  • Upgraded to Lion
• Back up disk is attached to a recent Airport Extreme
  (I originally created my backup on a Time Capsule, but migrated it to this one. It has run perfectly on Snow Leopard for 18 months)
• I use wireless 99.9% and have done so 100% since Lion.
• Backup created three years ago with the MacBook. So yes, weekly (ish) history for three years through all upgrades

Problem:

I have had the problems described in this discussion since migrating to Lion. I have also written earlier (but now there are so many posts it's hard to follow) that there are two separate issues:

• One indexing (this is something new(?) where TM indexes the drive... my guess is that it is actually creating an index on the local drive and not the TM drive (but only a guess). TM reports this clearly in the drop down icon. This can take anything from 30 minutes to 3 hours.
• Then we have the Spotlight indexing... which seems to me to have started after an index. This can take anything up to 18 hours on my system.
• I can't find anything concrete that causes this... seems a little random. I've recreated the spotlight indexes, etc. turned TM on and off several times (which - see below - could be part of the problem).
• I wondered if it was related to turning off the machine during a backup, but I've had the indexing and spotlight activity occurr when I am absolutely 100% that the last backup was fine and the machine was not touched.

My thoughts:

I have a feeling this is related to the new feature in TM in Lion which will still perform hourly backups even when the machine is not connected to a backup drive or network (a common issues with MacBooks of course). The idea is that while not having a "true" backup in case of failure, one does get the hourly and then daily and then weekly (if you travel a lot) backups of files you might need to refer back to.

The Apple promo stuff says that it will all sync back to the TM disk when you next connect. Cool idea, and I really like it.

But to do this, it seems that TM creates a virtual local disk (you can see this if you go to /volumes) which has a whole bunch of links to the real files. In effect a replica of your local drive. It seems to stay mounted 100% of the time (but hidden of course).

I think this is where the problem lies. It's new functionality, and so a greater risk of bugs.

My Solution:

Turn Time Machine OFF!

• No, I'm not being cynical. If you turn TM off, then this virtual local disk replicating the same local disk it sits on will be deleted / removed (the one used for backups when you are not connected to a TM drive).
• Then simply run a backup from the TM Icon in the Menu Bar when you want a backup.
• I actually quite like this... I don't need hourly backups, and I backup 4 - 6 times during the day manually, when I feel I've done enough work or changes to warrant it.
• It only takes three seconds to initiate.
• And the problem has now NOT come back for the past six days!
• Even this morning when my old battery failed (and the MacBook didn't sleep / hibernate properly).
  • By this, I mean I had a UUID's don't match message and saying that TM needed to traverse the whole drive / backup.
  • It did this much quicker than it used to under Snow Leopard.
  • And at the end of the backup the disk was ejected properly, and all is fine. No spotlight or other indexing!

And as for perforamance... I would argue it is a bout the same as Snow Leopard (but then I have always used wireless). I miss the progress in the Time Machine icon when it is "preparing" the backup - and it does feel a touch slower at preparing... even though I've no real way of telling. However, the actual backup feels much much quicker as does the "cleaning" or purging and merging of older backups.

With nearly 17,000 views of this dicussion, I am sure Apple are on the case... it's Apple's style never to acknowledge these types of issues, but they usually do get fixed.

I'd be interested in other people's experiences if you try the above. And I will report back if I get another failure... a.k.a. 18 hours of Spotlight churing! But touch wood, it's working now.

Sorry for the long post! Good Luck!

Nic.

Great Post! I lost my patience with the indexing and turned off time machine and it feels like I'm in control of my Mac again and If I want to back up I select back up now! Simples 🙂

I came to the same conclusion a few days again and believe its connected to the local backup's with Lion

Nic

Indeed, a good post. Let me add my experience.

I too had a long TM backup history (2 years), spanning Leopard, SL and Lion. Backups still seemed to work fine but the Spotlight indexing kicked in every few days and took 5 to 6 hours to finish.

I don't think that turning of TM and backing up manually would help for that problem, since even then every couple of days, the spotlight indexing would begin.

i also don't think it has to do with the 'local snapshot' functionality, since I had that turned off (to do so, simply type 'sudo tmutil disablelocal' in terminal, to enable it again switch time machine on and off or type 'sudo tmutil enablelocal' in terminal).

I also tried everything, including erasing spotlight indexes and rebuilding, repairing disks etc, but nothing helped. What I finally did was start all over again. My latest TM backup is now a couple of weeks old and backups really fly, 2 to 3 minutes (over wifi) every hour and I yesterday when TM started backing up 1,5 GB it took only 10 minutes over wifi! It wasn't an easy decision since I didn't want to loose all that history but I'm really happy I did it.

I have to say that Local Snapshots are still disabled, I might enable it again later on but for me, I see no added value currently.

Reye

I think that the problem is more related to using such a large TM backup history and having that migrated from SL.

I did a test based on Nic's post. Here are my results.

Time Machine had just completed an automatic backup, taking its usual 1 hour to complete. I turn off Time Machine. Then, I did a restart of the computer. Upon restart I ran a manual backup.

For me there was no difference in performance between the automatic back up, or the manual approach.

Some additional info:

Backup Disk (size): 999.83GB

Total Backup (size): 132.92GB

Reply to the last two posts:

1. I can only talk about my experiences, as you can yours. However, it seems to me that there might be two issues. We should remember that the original title of this discussion is:
   "Time Machine backups very slow in Lion"
   And there is a clear thread of discussions here where people have identified that backgroud spotlight indexing of the TM drive was "a" culprit of delaying the backup time. Partly because TM would wait for this to finish, partly because it was indexing as it was backing up... thrashing the disk and also network for those using a Time Capsule or Airport Disk.
   This does not mean that there is not another cause for slow backups... but I know that the spotlight and new indexing has been the culprit for my slow backups.
   I would ask Zedkay if he / she has checked activity monitor or the log files, etc. to be sure that there is no backgroun indexing going on. If that is the case, then it would seem that there are two different problems:
   
   1. TM Keeps reindexing and spotlighting the whole TM backup every few days causing delays to backps and slowing the system down (after upgrading to Lion).
      and
      
   2. TM backups are generally and unacceptably slow after upgrading to Lion (independently of spotlight indexing issues.
      
2. In response to ReyeBan your post is very interesting. I have been debating doing the same thing (and at the same time doing a clean install of Lion rather than my three-year history of who knows what junk lurking around).
   But maybe the issue is not so much the local backups but the way they are implemented with auto time machine? I only say that because I know my problem has gone away... and I have waited a week before posting to make sure (of course I can't promise, and I hope I don't come back here tomorrow with a tale of reindexing)!

Nic.

For me the problems never stayes away for a whole week, so I hope you're right! I do use my computer for the whole day so lot's of backing up and spotlight started to reindex every 2 to 3 days. I already ran TM without the local snapshots and still had the problems. But since now that I've started over they're not turned on either, I can't know absolutely sure that they are not the problem. I understood however that the feature where the local snapshots are 'integrated' in the TM backup disk on the next backup when that disk is accessible was dropped in one of the earlier betas. So it doesn't do that anymore I think.

I will turn local snapshots back on on see if anything changes for the worse. Unfortunately I will be travelling without my laptop next week so I can only report back the week after.

Reye

My system is also:

OS Lion 7.1

iMac 27 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7 with 8GB RAM

Internal 250GB SSD

Internal 1TB SATA Disk

Time Machine 2 Terabyte

I've disabled automatic backups via Time Machine as they are cripplingly slow. The latest backup is verging on two hours and the log reported by Time Machine Buddy looks like this:

Starting standard backup

Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/Data

Disk image already attached: /Volumes/Data/Rogue.sparsebundle, DIHLDiskImageAttach returned: 35

Disk image /Volumes/Data/Rogue.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups

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

Waiting for index to be ready (101)

2.50 GB required (including padding), 1.61 TB available

Copied 59860 files (130 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.

Copied 1024722 files (13.5 MB) from volume Macintosh HD 2.

1.91 GB required (including padding), 1.61 TB available

Copied 59829 files (104 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.

Copied 1024691 files (667 KB) from volume Macintosh HD 2.

So, that's the best part of two hours to backup 14MB give or take from the iMac across a GigE network into the time capsule.

Multiple disks is busted as far as I can tell....

But to do this, it seems that TM creates a virtual local disk (you can see this if you go to /volumes) which has a whole bunch of links to the real files. In effect a replica of your local drive. It seems to stay mounted 100% of the time (but hidden of course).

I think this is where the problem lies. It's new functionality, and so a greater risk of bugs.

I presume you mean /Volumes?

I don't appear to have such a thing in my /Volumes. Is this a laptop only thing? (My machine is a desktop---Mac Pro in fact).

I can also confirm that blowing the whole TM backup disk away and starting from scratch (and thus losing all the history) does not help. I did exactly that and had (and have) the problems.

Dan Creswell wrote:

Multiple disks is busted as far as I can tell....

Do we have anyone with multiple disks getting good performance?

Do we have anyone with a SINGLE disk getting good performance.

Updating my matrix...

Has anyone upgraded SL to Lion and got good performance? (As opposed to a clean install + migration).

Note. Like Dan I have multiple disks (both real physical disks and mulitple partitions on one of these. I had such a setup before on SL without experiencing slow TM backups)