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Time Machine backup very slow in Lion

After installing Lion Time Machine backup (not initial one which is long by default) takes about 40 minutes vs. about 5 minutes in Snow Leopard. Very annoying because it slows down my entire system for such a long time. Any help, please?

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jul 20, 2011 12:10 PM

Reply
488 replies

Dec 29, 2012 10:51 PM in response to petewaw

This is a monster thread - 32 pages over a year on an essential service that should be a ~P1 feature at Apple. Backup that runs at <2MB/sec over 1Gbit/sec ethernet is a serious issue. Just to confirm that 10.8.2 at the end of 2012 shows the same bahavior. I have 3 i7 16GB memory Macs on the same OS level doing the same TM 2MB/sec. At the same time my alternative backup Mini that does not run OSX anymore but Fedora 16 Linux with ext4 filesystem takes rsync backups of the same 10.8.2 Macs over ssh on ~50MB/sec.

Dec 30, 2012 4:32 PM in response to pzi123

Yeah, it seems that this problem isn't going to be addressed by Apple. Does anybody have suggestions for a good backup solution to replace TimeMachine? I want to be able to plug my external back up in for daily backups and be done with it in a short time. TimeMachine has me lingering over the computer just waiting for what should be a quick update.


Thanks

Dec 31, 2012 10:28 AM in response to Bruce Bridges

The OSX 10.8.2 over local USB connected SATA drive is working quite well. The 10.8.2 is a big improvement in local USB operation reliability. In previous OSX releases like 10.[67].x even the TM startup was an issue.

Still in 10.8.2 the over the ethernet backup speed is too slow - 2MB/sec would translate in a week of continuous backup for a standard disk that is shipped with Macs.

My alternative for over the network backup is rsync over ssh to linux running jobs from cron. The target disk is LVM2 that supports snapshots that are created also from cron jobs. In this way I just maintain directory for each Mac on the LAN and run incremental rsyncs. I keep two weeks of snapshots and expire older ones - kind of DIY NetApp. Unfortunately this is only for geeks and it is a project in itself while this should be plug-and-work directly from Apple.

Jan 2, 2013 1:38 PM in response to petewaw

I have a Mid-2010 27" iMac running Lion 10.7.5 backing up about 650GB to a reformatted HP 1TB external drive and the backup dialog is estimating 400+ days.

It's been running now for about 16 hours and I only have 975MB backed up. Anybody else think that's a little excessive? Is there something I should do or should have done to speed this up? Thank you!

Time Machine backup very slow in Lion

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