Q: Time Machine backup very slow in Lion

Millone64's method worked for me. I think. Certainly nothing else I've tried, even the terribly time-consuming techniques, did any good.

I turned Time Machine to OFF and then followed Millone64's instructions exactly. I test with manual backups, i.e. choosing BACK UP NOW from Time Machine's menu bar dropdown menu. I did two backups, and both took under 4 minutes. This was amazing at its face, since – no matter how small the backup – I haven't seen Time Machine backups in the 5-minute range for a long time.

I then went back to Spotlight preferences and enabled indexing of System Preferences and Fonts, too. Another manual backup, and it was again just about 4 minutes. Hurrah!

I then did some work and then turned Time Machine to ON. I didn't want to wait an hour to see how much time the next backup would require, so I triggered another manual backup. R'uh-r'oh! It took 20 minutes: 8 minutes PREPARING BACKUP, 10 minutes transferring about 250mb of data over wifi to my Time Capsule, then FINISHING BACKUP and CLEANING UP together about 2 minutes. I watched the progress in Time Machine's preference pane, and the data transfer seemed to "hang" at the 34.1mb mark for over 5 minutes, and took 2 minutes just to get there once BACKING UP started - but the remaining 216mb or so all zipped over in about 3 minutes.

20 minutes is still a long time, and there still seems to be something wrong (maybe I should deselect System Preferences and Fonts and leave them that way...), but even 20 minutes is a nice improvement over what I've been experiencing lately. Things have been so bad that I have had Time Machine OFF since shortly after I upgraded to Lion, doing a manual BACK UP NOW once or twice a day and often having to let it run all day (or all night while I slept) as the dang thing went through INDEXING BACKUP or took 90 minutes to transmit 100mb during BACKING UP. So if my average backup time is going to be 20 minutes, I can live with that.

I have Time Machine ON now, and I plan to leave it that way for at least the rest of tonight as I work to see how the automatic backups do in terms of time. I'll report back to this thread with the results; if things remain positive for me over the next day or two, perhaps other people might try Millone64's method.

Well, the first automatic hourly backup went OK: 17 minutes total for 52mb, with 10 minutes of that on PREPARING BACKUP and then a stall for over 5 minutes at 8mb. Another 1mb was backed up after that, and that took less than a minute - don't know why it did a second backup immediately afterward, though.

Unfortunately, the second automatic hourly backup went through a 12-minute PREPARING BACKUP phase and then went to BACKING UP for a minute or so (no data transfer, though, as far as I could tell) and then to INDEXING BACKUP. INDEXING BACKUP took about 10 minutes and then it went to BACKING UP of 41mb. It stuck at 27mb for about 5 minutes and then finished the final 14mb plus FINISHING BACKUP and CLEANING UP in less than 2 minutes, for a total of about 30 minutes.

edit: I didn't notice it at first, but a second backup started immediately after the 30-minute backup finished, just like the previous one. This second backup was for 33mb and took an extra 15 minutes total before the Time Machine Backups volume finally dismounted. That's 45 minutes, which is back to the ridiculous durations I experienced before I tried this particular fix.

I'm going to deselect System Preferences and Fonts within System Preferences->Spotlight->Search Results (without restarting) and see if we get back to 4 minute total time for subsequent automatic hourly backups. Because if things stay at 45 minutes per backup, I'm not leaving it on automatic hourlies; it will be back to one or two backups a day.

Philip Raby1 wrote:

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

Oddly, today I can't find anything in Console relating to backupd. There was yesterday but not now...

Do you see any indications in Activity Monitor of things going on that backupd might be waiting for? (I'm mostly thinking of mds (Spotlight) processes)

There's one small mds entry but that's it. Nothing relating to TM either, as far as I can see.

Is it far to assume that my problem is no longer Spotlight related, as it's gone beyond the indexing stage?

Cheers

Phil

Philip Raby1 wrote:

 

Is it far to assume that my problem is no longer Spotlight related, as it's gone beyond the indexing stage?

Probably. I'd try the following (don't know if you've already done this):

First, open Console.app, choose system.log and filter for backupd (or use a terminal and the command line if you prefer that - I usually do that, my login account is non-admin, so I can't simply watch system.log directly from the console app).

Then open the TM System pref. panel. Check that there's nothing wrong in the setup (disk, exceptions etc.) and then turn TM off, wait a little, and then turn it on again.

Then see what backupd logs in the console.

Hi Espen

Oddly, I'm still not getting any results when I search 'backupd' in Console.

I've tried stopping the backup but, after six hours it's still in the process of stopping.

Did you try a reboot yet?

Well, I don't know why things went so fast and smoothly the first couple of times after I tried Millone64's technique, but I seem to pretty much be back to square one.

My Mac just spent most of the night doing one of those invisible indexing operations, where the Time Machine Preference Pane and menu bar item show no activity but the Time Machine Backups volume doesn't dismount between automatic backups. Now that it's done with that, backups are taking quite a long time every hour, with extended PREPARING BACKUP periods and the data transfer moving slowly or seeming to completely stall early on and then finishing the bulk of the data transfer to the Time Capsule quickly, with fairly brief FINISHING BACKUP and CLEANING UP periods.

Yes, now rebooted and I'm back to square one - Indexing backup...

Hello all, i have been reviewing the thread since the beginning as im having the same painful slowness since i upgraded to lion, i have tried all of the solutions suggested without success and i dont see any errors in the console just regular informational messsages for time machne just like many of you.

There is one thing i wanted to share that i believe will be helpful for the people researching or documenting the bug.

My Mac Book Pro's time machine back up is running ok and fast through wireless connection to a networked "My Book Live"
My Mac Book (white late 2009) was doing fine backing up with lion using the same configuration, wireless connection to a networked "My Book Live". Also before upgrading to lion, in snow leopard, i was backing up to a USB connected "My Book Essential" without any issues or any sloweness. However, once I upgraded to lion the same USB configuration fails and won't get over a certain number of GB transfered, backup indexing works just fine but its the moving of the data to the drive that hangs, sometimes 1GB, sometimes 30GB, it just never ends and the progress bar goes from 1 day to 2 to even 15 days :s...

And if I reconfigure TM, remove temp backups and do everything said here to start from scratch it still fails and if i do the same but now using my wireless network setup for backup then it works just fine, i can put the same usb drive through the network and TM will back up fast and ok.

Also just in case you were wandering if the USB port on the drive or the mac were faulty,nope transfering files directly to the drive's shares works fine and does it in a snap. 40GB files move really quick. full disk copy works fine.

Seems to me that the issue is TM with the USB connected setup where it hangs and normally this setup was the fastest. now i am better off backing up wirelessly rather than via USB. weird isnt it?

I tried rebulding the usb drive the networked drive, conecting the usb drive to the router, removing temp backups, reindexing all files for spotlight,shutting down in the middle, i tried just about everything without luck, it is just the backup from TM to a USB drive that i have problems with. i even tried a different usb drive but it also fails miserably.

I am fine now backing up throug the network but wanted to share with you all just in case your issue is the same when backing up via usb... try backing up through your network instead and you'll see the difference. i know wifi will take a looong time and may seem like the same issue but it is not backing through wifi is slow but not as slow as with this BUG with lion. it takes me 5 hours via wifi for an initital backup of 180GB of data in a 250GB while the same backup through USB will never end i have waited 3 days and just never ends and the console didnt show any errors just common messages.

Hi

Have upgraded my MB from Snow Leopard to Lion. Backup to my Time Capsule was a disaster! A couple of MB took more than an hour! Also the MB had problems to find the WiFi after sleeping session.

Tried the following method:

Quit all programs

Shut off computer

Remove battery

Press and hold power button for 5 sec

Reconnect battery and magsafe

Start

Everything was running OK!

Bo

Trying to correct my slow backups situation, I have made the following observation over the course of the last few weeks:

Every now and then, Lion decides that the entire Time Capsule needs to be reindexed. This takes hours on LAN and days on WIFI, during which hourly incremental backups also take hours, because most of the time it's waiting for the index to be ready. After a while, the reindexing is done and backups finish normally again. Until a few days later, Lion begins to reindex everything again. So for me, the bug is that Lion keeps reindexing the whole drive.

I did check the integrity of the Time Capsule and my Mac's drive, I also deleted the Spotlight index at one point and tried various things to correct the situation to no avail. It seems like a simple bug. Lion thinks it needs to reindex again and again.

I'm on a GBit LAN right now with a 2008 iMac and a 1st generation Time Capsule (I think). This setup is rather slow, and the latest incremental backup has just taken 11 minutes, but for my setup I think that's actually normal. It is definitely acceptable for me. It's when they take hours to complete due to concurrent reindexing that's my problem with Lion. I'm aware that on new gear backups seem to take a minute or less, but I don't think that would ever be possible on my setup, and it certainly never took less than 4 minutes under Snow Leopard.

I'm surprised 10.7.1 didn't fix this, because I personally would consider this a serious bug. Incremental backups mustn't take 6 hours to complete (like yesterday).

bofromoskarshamn wrote:

 

Tried the following method:

Hello! I think the reason this worked may be that it triggered an fseventd cleanup. If possible, could you have a look at your logs from that day and see if there is any message saying "event logs in /.fseventsd out of sync with volume.  destroying old logs."?

Apple please fix! People all over the net are having this issue! Thank you so much Saint Pondini for your site and all your help. Apple should kiss you, and pull one finger nail off the each person in the development process who was responsible for implementing or ensuring this is functional on Lion. From developer to tester, if there was a tester. What a life/productivity killer on an otherwise flawless upgrade.

A5 seemed to do the trick but after a couple of weeks the wimpering Lion is having indexing issues again on a time machine that is just over 6 months old and my second in the past 4 years. It's A5 again and hopefully a fix in a future update.

I was backing-up from my iMac through an Airport Extreme to a LaCie HD. Since Lion, OS/X refers to that as Time Capsule, but beside that, it takes a full hour to backup and mess with indexes. That process is then interrupted for the next TM backup, with the same story.

Now I have a second HD that I connect through USB as a TM backup (a backup of a backup so to speak) and I tried that for performance. Well, it finishes within two minutes and backups only a small amount of the data that needs to be backupped. The Lion TM through Airport/Time Capsule seems to backup a lot of data all the time.

My conclusion is that TM works well, but somewhere in the Airport/Time Capsule handling somethings go wrong.

Maybe this helps Apple Support to look more seriously at the problem.