Time Machine backup very slow in Lion

same issue here since a few days

TM is using ca 15mn to back up 80MB; stauys for ever at the initiail step of 107k

this is crazy; I had the habit of launching a quick manual back up before packing my laptop, now this cannot be done !

Apple, please help !!!!!!!!!!!

After having the common problem with spotlight indexing forever and slowing down TM backups, I woke up this morning to find that TM had verified my backup overnight and ERASED three years of backups. Apple has sent me an article with a supposed fix for the spotlight issue. I'll post if it works. It must be done overnight or at least when the computer won't be used. This is a really big bug in 10.7.5, the worst fumble I've seen from Apple.

TM is supposed to make our lives easier and seamless. Instead it's consuming so much more time than simply manually backing up. What I find frustrating is that it will work for a short time, then suddenly, it says it needs to do a New Backup, so then the 28 day backup starts again. Apple needs to fix this. I have stopped using it.

I haven't yet installed it, but apple released an update for 10.7.5 today that they say will fix the issue. I will give this a try and report back unless someone beats me too it.

I just installed it, and it seems to fix it, at least for me.

Should be avaiable via Software Update, the App Store, or directly from: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1599

Installed via Software Update and it resolved both the Spotlight indexing-forever and the Time Machine backup issue for me.

But... I now have 100's of mdworker error messages in the console log, some repeating, but dozens of unique errors. Had never seen any of them with 10.7.4 or earlier, so not sure what's up with that... something for another thread if anyone else sees them...

Karl

I'm not seeing those.

Post a few in a new thread.

Having the same problems as described. After 15 minutes, only 24kb had backed up. Tried several things involving turning off Spotlight and indexing.

But good news...Apple just came out with a supplemental update to 10.7.5. One of the fixes is:

Resolves an issue that may cause Time Machine backups to take a very long time to complete

Updated and restarted my MacBook Pro. Doing a Time Machine backup to an external HD via FireWire as I type. TM is preparing backup...unfortunately, due to all my prior fix attempts, MBP is indexing, so I'm guessing that has to finish before the backup starts. 39 minutes to go. Nuts!

Going to check in the morning because it's 12:30 AM. Messed around enough tonight. Need sleep. Will report later with (hopefully) good news...

Problem solved with this one ! Thanks apple, and thanks Pondini

Checked this morning and found backup completed successfully to external hard drive via FireWire. Now trying TM backup over wi-fi to NAS (network attached storage). Seems to be going a lot faster. Thank you, Apple.

Downloaded and installed the Supplemental Update and problem solved.

Totally worked for me, too. Whew.

Hello all, in the TM and Spotlight Fan Club!

This is the first time in this Forum, and I’m not sure I did replied to the right thing.

My reply was to someone who suggested we ALL did bug reports, on this one, to Apple!

So, this i my TM-story! Short version!

1. Update Lion with the famous 10.7.5 update. Just to be sure that my system in up to date, before going to MT.
2. Started TM-backup. Just be sure I had a perfect backup, before going to MT.
3. TM could not make an incremental on my Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4. Must make a new complete backup. DID NOT DO THAT!
4. Since I have been working with IT for 45 years, I had one more TM-backup on an external FW-800 disk. Excluded this one in spotlight and started TM witch completed after 2 days! 10 GB incremental But it did complete. I Also have have a Carbon Copy CLoner on another external disk. Just to be sure! ;-))
5. Tried the rebuild Spotlight-index trick. 8 weeks hmm...!
6. Did a bug report to Apple support.
7. Called Apple-Support and told them I found a !00% bug! Hm, interesting they said. Wait a sec! The Apple-man came back and confirmed that it’s known problem and they are working hard with it! They usually never confirms that they have a problem!
8. Apple replied on my bug-report, and said it’s a duplicate of ID# 12136478.
9. So, since I have an actual TM-backup on my FW800-disk, I installed MT.
10. The Spotlight re-indexing, witch I started in Lion, did complete! Got the information that this is going to take 15 hours. I left it going for the night. In the morning, 7 hours later, it has completed
11. Restarted my TM-backup with the ReadyNAS, and did a new complete backup, as I had no choice in this case. 400 GB on a MBP 15 inch, early 2011 I7 2,2 Ghz, 8GB on wired Eth-net, did take about 8 hours.
12. So now everything is working, even that have a feeling that TM is slower than before. Could be wrong here. May be I never realised how slow TM really are, before! I do recommend Carbon Copy Cloner to an external drive, as a complement to TM.

Conclusion:

Apple really let the ”Plugg and Play”-users down this time. And I wonder why???

As I said earlier I have been working as a Systems-programmer and System developer for 45 years. Mostly IBM-mainframe (MVS, MVS, Z/OS, Assembler, Cobol, DB2, MS Windows, VB6, Powerbuilder and a lot of other short words, many of you never heard of. Now I am retired, but playing around with Xcode, just for the fun of it!

But in my earlier life, I always could get help and information from IBM and MS, about ongoing problems.

As I have been told and also learned APPLE NEVER DOES??? This is really bad!

Apple has to change. They cannot go on pretending they never have known ongoing problems!

I think Andyboutte was the first one. I also suggested to do this later, from my recent experience of being a support fellow for a big company for which end-users' problems were less important than stock owners' benefits... the only way to make them move are then statistics.

Developpers cannot do anything if statistics are not with them. And bugreports and user complaints are statistics.

So let us make bug reports now, every time we have a problem !

Come on, guys, read a few of the recent posts:

A "10.7.5 supplemental update" was released on October 4, including a fix for indexing and slow backups. There are dozens of posts in this and a couple of similar threads saying it does.

Available via Software Update, the App Store, or directly from: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1599