Time Machine backup very slow in Lion

I'm trying this: TimeMachineEditor.

Lets you set your own time interval for backups, managed by the app, not by Time Machine.

Time Machine remains in OFF position. I'll report back if it works.

http://timesoftware.free.fr/timemachineeditor/

i am having this happen on a fresh FW800 backup drive connected to the MacBook - no Time Capsule, no LAN, no WiFi.

Just extremely slow backups - 20-30 minutes for 1.5 MB

FYI, TimeMachineEditor seems to work fine.

I set the updates manually to 6 hours or something similar. So far, the crazy indexing hasn't come back.

Nice!

It seems pretty clear what other people have already said: when running automatic backups the index can be corrupted in which case you are screwed until a new index can be built.

Most annoying is, I DON'T WANT THAT INDEX BUILT IN THE FIRST PLACE! It's not as if I have managed to figure out how to search my time machine backups for files that existed in the past. It just doesn't work.

So, once this rebuild is done I expect my computer will stop being so slow. And then I will use that tool that somebody mentioned briefly which runs the backups every 6 hours or so. Or I will continue to run them manually, which worked really well for a long time.

And I will continue not to upgrade anybody else in my family or extended family until Apple sorts this out.

I waited before upgrading to Lion - time for Apple to remove the biggy problems. But it's a complete nightmare. No version of Windows has ever been this bad. I want to use my computer but instead am having to spend all my time trying to get/keep it workng.

And this TM bug is really bad - I expect my computer fan to brn out soon. Cannot keep my laptop on my lap as the exhaust air gets too hot after a bit.

I am amazed that Apple have not sorted this out yet. My computer must have had just an hour or two in the last few week when it was not running hot building indexes !!

Anybody have any idea when Apple might bother to have a look into it or are they just too busy with their iPhone 5.

Used to be robust but now really weak. And its not like it does anything SL didn't do (expet work). The few features I hoped to use are just too bug ridden so I've had to change to 3rd party software anyway (e.g. RSS in Mail - classic view forgets column layout between runs, etc. etc.).

Maybe It's that SJ has passed control thet has lost them the edge. Next computer will be Windows (and I feel sick for even thinking that but I need something that works).

22 pages and no solution and no suggestion of any fix from Apple.

I resolved thanks to apple support...

Please don't talk about win 😝

You can't compare OS X to win

I agree this is a way WAY below par release of the Apple operating system. Lion has great potential but it is full of bugs and this is one of them.

But rather than freaking out and/or burning out your CPU fans may I suggest that you turn off time machine for now? You didn't need hourly backups before your first mac and you really don't need them now, either. Just turn off automatic TM backups and run one each day manually. Or maybe twice a day if you want. But don't run anyting manually until it's been idle for a whole day. By then it should have finished creating the darn index that it keeps throwing away by accident, but seems to survive just fine with manual backups.

And once the problem is fixed somebody will send out a message on this board and you can turn it back on again.

I know it is a real drag and it's just one of many issues I have been facing since my premature upgrade. But I think it will sort itself out in the next couple of weeks if not sooner, with a new release of the OS. Fingers crossed.

Cheers!

wavemotion wrote:

I resolved thanks to apple support...

What did you do to get it sorted ? I've deleted indexes, repaired the disk, spent hours trawling fora for anything I have not done but making no progress.

wavemotion wrote:

Please don't talk about win 😝

You can't compare OS X to win

I know - but you get to the point where you ask why ? All I want now is a computer that works and have completely lost patience with "better" solutions. Working would be enough.

Ian

Jonathan Payne1 wrote:

burning out your CPU fans

Right 🙂

DeimosL wrote:

I know - but you get to the point where you ask why ? All I want now is a computer that works and have completely lost patience with "better" solutions. Working would be enough.

Ian

You said the truth.

Try this:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3190305?answerId=16246344022#16246344022

i tried that "fix" and it didnt do anything....

There is no fix until Apple fixes it because it's a bug without any workarounds that anybody has been able to detect. They corrupt the index for some reason and we can make many guesses as to why and try to prevent it from happening until they fix the bug properly.

In the mean time, the one thing that has worked for me is to

(1) turn off automatic backups

(2) let the thing run an index all night if it has to

(3) after things have calmed down and there's no disk activity, risk a manual backup.

If #3 works then you can start doing manual backups until they fix the bug.

One thing I've noticed is that TM seems to create directory damage almost every time it runs; left unrepaired this will slow things down a lot. My work-around was to start running two TM drives (one internal, one external) which I switch between daily, and to run Alsoft Disk Warrior on all drives as soon as I experience slowdowns or other weirdness. DW has found directory damage on the TM drive every time, but there is no damage to the boot drive -- this to me seems to point to an issue with TM. I've talked to Alsoft tech support who point out how complex what TM is doing, but the daily corruption/repair cycle (under Lion) is wearing thin. Let's hope Apple find a fix soon.

I have no idea why, but my TM seems to be running well now. I am backing up 1.6 TB of data on my iMac internal 2TB drive.

I had my iMac going to a firewire 3TB external drive and it took 2 weeks with multiple retires to get it to even do one backup. Then it took many, many hours to do each backup. Never got more than 2 backups done. I finally downloaded chronosync and gave up on TM. Chronosync works great.

Then I got a 3TB Time Capsule from work to use for my macbook air. Figured I'd give it a try at backing up my iMac as well. First backup worked (took 23 hours to do). And since then, each TM backup is complete in minutes. I have the Time Capsule hooked to the iMac via ethernet cable not over WiFi.

As an interesting note, my MBA backs up very quickly to the Time Capsule via WiFi as well.

I know this post doesn't provide any useful data, but thought I would share.

Tom