Time Machine backup very slow in Lion

mspringfield wrote:

Mine is backing up fine after the initial very slow backup but they are still taking a lot longer than they did in Snow Leopard. I am suspecting that it is an issue in the compression that Time Machine uses.

No; Time Machine does not use compression.

See the green box in #D2 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting for some possible fixes.

Many thanks -- I'll let it run. If that doesn't work, can you point me to the right section of your website for erasing and starting TC afresh?

#Q5 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule.

I've been having the same problems with my Time Capsule as everyone else. However one thing I noticed is that my Time Capsule does not automatically disconnect after the long backups and I have to manually disconnect it in the Finder or else it's fan will run continuously. Anyone else with this problem?

Thanks very much for the advice. Yes I use the same Time Machine to back up both my iMac and my wife's power book.

Same here. TC doesn't disconnect and the backup is very slow!

Hope Apple will fix it soon!

What helped to me was:

1 - Reformat my backup drive with old Snow Leopard backups

2 - Set it up as backup drive in Time Machine

3 - Run BackUp

After initial backup that lasted 5 hours for 130GB of data, all further backups are rapid fast. I guess even faster than in Snow Leopard.

I've got a few Macbook Pro's and a Mac Mini all backing up to my time capsule over WiFi. The mini hardly has anything on it and it was able to finish its backup the day after upgrading to OSX Lion. The Macbook Pro 15" took about 2 days. (2008 model)

My 17" Macbook Pro (2009 model) just finished backing up this morning, took 4 or 5 days to finally finish the backup. I wound up connecting with a CAT5e (1 gbps) between the macbook pro and time capsule to speed things up. Even with the 1gbps connection, it took almost 2 days to finish backing up this one. Phew!

My backups are still slow after a few days. Current backup has been running for a hour and 20 minutes. Activily monitor showing about 6 MBps, still indexing. MBP with SSD connected via 5 GHz, good signal, no other TC activity, little change since yesterday.

Also happens on other MBP. Connecting via ethernet speeds it up considerably to about half an hour but still using up a lot of bandwidth for a long time, typically more than 6 MBps average, over 20 in peaks.

There's some indication it might be a corrupted Spotlight index on your backups, causing it to have to be indexed over and over.

A clue may be lurking in your logs. Use the widget in #A1 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting to display the backup messages from your logs. Locate the backup in question, then copy and post all the messages here.

7/24/11 3:22:05 PM: QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN

7/24/11 3:22:08 PM: Disk image /Volumes/Untitled/MBP 15.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups

7/24/11 3:22:08 PM: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

7/24/11 3:22:08 PM: Ownership is disabled on the backup destination volume. Enabling.

7/24/11 3:22:18 PM: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD

7/24/11 3:22:18 PM: Deep event scan at path:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|

7/24/11 3:23:32 PM: Finished scan

7/24/11 3:25:39 PM: 17.96 GB required (including padding), 1.06 TB available

7/24/11 3:59:56 PM: Copied 282132 files (4.6 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.

7/24/11 4:01:19 PM: 10.13 GB required (including padding), 1.06 TB available

7/24/11 4:01:19 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

7/24/11 4:02:19 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

7/24/11 4:03:19 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

etc etc

7/24/11 4:55:58 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

7/24/11 4:56:59 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

7/24/11 4:58:00 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

7/24/11 4:59:00 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

7/24/11 5:00:09 PM: Copied 0 bytes of 150.7 MB, 0 of 112 items

7/24/11 5:03:30 PM: Copied 3257 files (153.1 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

7/24/11 5:04:08 PM: Starting post-backup thinning

7/24/11 5:04:58 PM: Deleted /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/MBP 15/2011-07-23-124930 (192.9 MB)

7/24/11 5:04:58 PM: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed

7/24/11 5:04:59 PM: Backup completed successfully.

7/24/11 5:05:17 PM: Ejected Time Machine disk image.

7/24/11 5:05:17 PM: Ejected Time Machine network volume.

And today:

7/27/11 7:01:30 PM: QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN

7/27/11 7:01:33 PM: Disk image /Volumes/Untitled/MBP 15.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups

7/27/11 7:01:33 PM: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

7/27/11 7:05:10 PM: 9.28 GB required (including padding), 1.05 TB available

7/27/11 7:05:10 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

several lines deleted

7/27/11 8:19:28 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

7/27/11 8:20:29 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

7/27/11 8:21:30 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

7/27/11 8:22:32 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

7/27/11 8:23:33 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

7/27/11 8:24:34 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

7/27/11 8:25:35 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

7/27/11 8:26:37 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

7/27/11 8:27:37 PM: Copied 0 bytes of 236.5 MB, 0 of 388 items

7/27/11 8:30:27 PM: Copied 2479 files (243.0 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

7/27/11 8:31:58 PM: 8.87 GB required (including padding), 1.05 TB available

7/27/11 8:31:58 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

7/27/11 8:41:08 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

7/27/11 8:59:30 PM: Waiting for index to be ready (100)

continuing...

Hi.

Isn't fastest way to format backup drive?

After I formated my backup drive and run backup again, all backups (except initial backup) are rapid fast.
My Time Machine is now a lot faster than it was in Snow Leopard.

Sorry to post that again, but I am so satisfied with performance of my Time Machine backup, that I just want to share this and I see that some guys still experience almost same problems as I did.

So make "Erase Disk" (format) of your backup drive in "Disk Utility", reselect your backup drive in Time Machine, run backup and wait for first long lasting backup to finish. After that, all incremental backups will be super fast.

If anyone tried this and still experience slow backups after that, let me know.

Drat. 😟

All those Waiting for index to be ready messages aren't right.

The easy option is to delete the backups and let Time Machine start fresh. See #Q5 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule.

The hard way is to delete the Spotlight index in each set of backups. The next backup will be lengthy, too, as the index is rebuilt. I'd not advise it, but post back if you want to tackle that.

Yes but formatting will destroy all your backups, for all your Macs. I don't want to lose my history data. Strangely enough the other MBP just finished its backup in two minutes while being connected via ethernet.

Maks Zbogar wrote:

Hi.

Isn't fastest way to format backup drive?

Yes, but here we have several Macs all backing up to a Time Capsule.

That's rather more involved unfortunately, but yes, deleting and starting over is certainly easier. 😉