Time Machine backup very slow in Lion

You may want to try the fix in my response to Inkjetmac.

In that case, the next backup was much faster; we haven't yet heard about subsequent ones.

EarthBased wrote:

Fix Time Machine Sparsebundle Network Backup Errors

That's for an entirely differnet situation (and usually not a good solution to it, either).

MidWestMike wrote:

My back ups are still crawling, and now when its running you can't use the computer to get to the web, the only thing I can do is delete mail.

This is very very frustrating - had no issues at all before loading Lion.

Check Activity Monitor and see if you have high CPU% for mds and mdhelper. If so, then Spotlight is indexing your Time Machine Volume.

It took over 5 hours for Spotlight to index my Time Machine Volume, then things went back to normal,

After postng the above the system produced this:

7/27/11 10:38:51 PM: Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

7/27/11 10:39:51 PM: Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

7/27/11 10:41:51 PM: Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

7/27/11 10:44:51 PM: Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

7/27/11 10:48:51 PM: Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

7/27/11 10:53:51 PM: Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

7/27/11 10:59:51 PM: Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

7/27/11 11:06:51 PM: Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

7/27/11 11:14:53 PM: Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

7/27/11 11:23:53 PM: Waiting for Spotlight to finish indexing /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

7/27/11 11:33:05 PM: Ejected Time Machine disk image.

7/27/11 11:33:06 PM: Ejected Time Machine network volume.

So after completing the backup the indexing took a while. It might help that the disc is a 128 GB SSD with 86 GB free. Will post back with results from next backup.

7/28/11 6:13:58 PM: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

7/28/11 6:14:21 PM: 2.53 GB required (including padding), 1.05 TB available

7/28/11 6:15:37 PM: Copied 3068 files (169.8 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

7/28/11 6:15:37 PM: 2.40 GB required (including padding), 1.05 TB available

7/28/11 6:16:02 PM: Copied 1142 files (1.0 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

7/28/11 6:16:06 PM: Starting post-backup thinning

7/28/11 6:16:45 PM: Deleted /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/MBP 15/2011-06-28-223452 (199.9 MB)

7/28/11 6:16:45 PM: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed

7/28/11 6:16:45 PM: Backup completed successfully.

7/28/11 6:16:49 PM: Ejected Time Machine disk image.

7/28/11 6:16:49 PM: Ejected Time Machine network volume.

OK. So now I will revert to wireless.

I'm suffering with the same sort of problems that people are describing here. My main problem seems to be the backup appearing to hang at 'Finishing backup...'

The last backup was only 9.5MB but it's been sat finishing backup for 45 mins already. I'm geting no extra messages in the logs to tell me anything is happening either, although the process appears to still be running in Activity Monitor and the external hard drive is still spinning.

Any thoughts?

Update: It is still alive - 46 mins after the 'Copied 2826 files (9.5 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.' message was logged and it started 'Finishing backup' it has now started 'Cleaning up' and 'Starting post-backup thinning' was logged.

Looks like I just needed to be a little more patient. Any thoughts on why it is so slow though?

Sometimes deleting old backups can take a long time, but that much time between the copying and finishing stages is quite unusual. 😟

You might want to copy and post the messages here, as Inkjetmac did. See #A1 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. But don't use the widget mentioned there; that's usuallly the best and easiest, but it doesn't show the timestamps, and they may help in this case. Use Console and filter for backupd, per the pink box there.

EdamS51 wrote:

Looks like I just needed to be a little more patient. Any thoughts on why it is so slow though?

Check your Console Log (Applications/Utility->Console).

In the Console "Search", enter: Time Machine, to see what's going on.

Tony T1 wrote:

. . .

Check your Console Log (Applications/Utility->Console).

In the Console "Search", enter: Time Machine, to see what's going on.

Actually, filter for backupd not Time Machine.

Or use the widget in #1 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Yes, sorry about that!

OK, we are up to 6 pages on this topic so it is a widspread problem. I am better than before (installed and ran OnyX to do some cleaup), but Time Machine is still backing up much more often than under Snow Leopard and the messages in the syslog under 'backupd' are not as verbose and helpful IIRC. When do we expect the first Lion service pack?

EarthBased wrote:

OK, we are up to 6 pages on this topic so it is a widspread problem.

No, there are several different problems here, many (most) of which have been solved.

In an earlier post, you said you hadn't repaired your backups. If you haven't done that, do so.

EarthBased wrote:

OK, we are up to 6 pages on this topic so it is a widspread problem.

The only problem is that Apple should have used a 'pop-up' window (like they use the first time a TM Volume is used).

It take a very long time to index and spotlight index a previous TM volume that is mounted wirelessly via afp.

Best to wait at least 12 hours for the first mount of TM in Lion. After the initial index, it backs-up quickly.

Tony

Just ran it:

Verify and Repair volume “Time Machine Backups”

Checking file systemChecking Journaled HFS Plus volume.

Detected a case-sensitive volume.

Checking extents overflow file.

Checking catalog file.

Checking multi-linked files.

Checking catalog hierarchy.

Checking extended attributes file.

Checking multi-linked directories.

Checking volume bitmap.

Checking volume information.

The volume Time Machine Backups appears to be OK.

Volume repair complete.Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.