Q: Time Machine backup very slow in Lion

petewaw wrote:

. . .

it runs twice (!?) - first about 350 MB and then about 1,2 MB

That part is normal; if it detects more changes during the backup, it will make a second pass -- normally very small and quick.

I also noticed that Time Machine was backing up my entire mailbox database for my Gmail account (about 5GB) everytime I got a new email (I think mail under Snow Leopard only backed up each new message, if it even did that). at 5-7GB (depending on what I did with the email), my "hourly" backups (wirelessly to a TImeCapuse) were taking WAY too long and slowing down my 2008 MacBook Pro. I had to exclude the mailbox folders in  ~/Library/Mail/V2/ from Time Machine to get the backups back to a regular "size" and schedule...

I was having the same problem.  When I went into Time Machine to look at my history, I noticed most of my past slices were not accessible.  These were from the time prior to upgrading to Lion.  I took a guess that TM is having issues bridging backups pre and post Lion? I decided to clear out my TM and start over.  Today so far my backups are back to normal in terms of time.

Hope this helps!

youngjm wrote:

 

I was having the same problem.  When I went into Time Machine to look at my history, I noticed most of my past slices were not accessible.  These were from the time prior to upgrading to Lion.  I took a guess that TM is having issues bridging backups pre and post Lion? I decided to clear out my TM and start over.  Today so far my backups are back to normal in terms of time.

Did you erase and install Lion? If so, you could have accessed the old backups.  An erased disk is treated as a new one, so it's the same as an old drive that's no longer connected.  See the pink box in #15A of Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

??

I deleted the sparse bundle on my external drive connected to my AExtreme and stated over.  Lion was an in place upgrade.  Since I have other backups in the cloud, loosing my TM history was not a big issue.

Problem solved for me, I am moving on!  Hopefully this helps others.....

Mine was the same way. I tried both a locally connected external drive and to an external drive connected to my AirPort Extreme Base Station. My MacBook Air (2010) had 37 Gig to backup took about 4.5 hrs and my iMac (Late 2009) with 180 gig to backup took a painful 15 hours. I thought that it might have just been a slow drive but I can write a 1.5 gig file to the drive in about 3 minutes with means the Air should have completed in under an hour and a half and the iMac about 4 hrs. It has to be something in Time Machine. Since then backups have been for the most part, normal but man that first one pretty much rendered my systems useless.

I tried to setup Time Capsule to factory settings, formatted 2 TB disc at Capsule and showing me initial full backup 390 GB for 72 hours. Uhnappy :-((

I did a full time machine backup over ethernet after upgrading to Lion.  Now Time Machine is slow on Wi-Fi to Time Capsule.  Also, the log messages are not as helpful and seem out fo sync to what is actually happening.  A test 44MB backup took over 20 minutes! The log messages for 'backupd' post-lion install always indicate needing 1.19GB but then only backs up under 100 MB!   Something is wrong with Lion backupd.

I don't wish to re-initalize Time Machine and lose all my backups!   Apple???

Verify your internal HD, and repair your backups, per #6 in Using Disk Utility.

Then Repair Permissions, per #5 there.

If that doesn't help, see the green box in #D2 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Same slow backup here.

Is anybody using an airport extreme by any chance?

Pagemakers2 wrote:

 

Same slow backup here.

 

Is anybody using an airport extreme by any chance?

I hate to have to tell you this, but backing-up that way is unreliable and not supported by Apple.  See;  Using Time Machine with an Airport Extreme Air Disk.

I don't connect via USB. It's connected via ethernet and it has worked faultlessly for years with leopard.

Upgrading to lion and time machine is bust on every mac that connects to it.

I repaired perms using repair partition and after stopping time machine tried to repair time machine sparse bundle but disk utility would not enable repair just verify disk which I skipped.   I am backing up again but it definitely is slower post-lion.  Also, I have reliably been backing up to a time capsule via WRT54G DD-WRT wifi since snow leopard came out and when need to do deep index connecting via Ethernet fine.  

I have read that Apple killed 3rd party drives for Time Machine with lion. I have a 1 TB LaCie hard drive that is connected via firewire 800. I haven't gotten an error but I get this status: 

Starting standard backup

Backing up to: /Volumes/LaCie Time Machine/Backups.backupdb

Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD

Deep event scan at path:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|

Finished scan

Deep event scan at path:/Users/Edmondson/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Database reason:contains changes|must scan subdirs|found in deep scan|missed reservation|

Finished scan

Does this mean it is backing up because I let it for an hour and it seemed to stay on this forever. I killed the back up. Should I just let it try to finish?

Any help appreciated...thanks Jay