Q: Time Machine backup very slow in Lion

J Edmondson wrote:

 

I have read that Apple killed 3rd party drives for Time Machine with lion.

If you believe everything you read, I have some shares in a bridge in Brooklyn for sale.  Cheap. 

There is a problem with many NAS drives, whose makers didn't bother to update them, but not with normal external HDs, and there doesn't seem to be a problem with yours, or Time Machine.

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

That means Time Machine isn't sure that the previous backup of your internal HD was finished properly.  In some circumstances, that's normal.  See #A6 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting for details.

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

Finished scan

Because of the uncertainty, Time Machine has to compare everything on your HD to the backups, to see what's changed and needs to be backed-up.

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

That one means iPhoto was open at the time of the last backup, in a way that Time Machine couldn't back it up ("missed reservation") on your other drive.   Also normal in some circumstances.

I killed the back up. Should I just let it try to finish?

Yes. 

For some reason, Apple removed the "Scanning xxxx items" and "Preparing xxxx items" messages you used to see from the TM icon in your menubar or on the Prefs panel during a deep scan, so it looks like it's hung.

If you find that silly, feel free to tell Apple here:  http://www.apple.com/feedback/timemachine.html

My Time Capsule backup is rendered useless.

It gets to 28KB and sits there for hours and hours and hours.

I have 4 macs backing up to a Time Capsule.  It's worked faultlessly for years now, 1 backs up OK, 2 are VERY intermittant and the 4th backs up about 2KB an hour!

...and all I did was upgrade to Lion.

THanks...I am letting it run through now. It says I need 10 gigs for back up. I didn't get that message yesterday. 

SUCCESS! I think it did get hung up yesterday. Today took just 34 minutes.

Same problem here. I upgraded to Lion the day of its release and now everytime TM starts it slows down my mid 2010 imac considerably. Wasn't an issue with snow leopard.

What have you tried to fix it?

Fix it? Why should I have to fix it? I am expecting Apple to fix it and should do so sooner than latter!

Just having to look the web to confirm it was a problem frustrate me. No time for this...

If you just want to rant and complain, don't expect any help here. 

If you want to fix it, try the suggestions in this and other threads.  If nothing helps, post back with your setup, what the symptoms are, what you're tried, and the results.

agree with pondini

Os lion just came out less than a month..so dont expect to high...meantime doin backup is the best result if you wanna play with thing which is consider new born....need lots of thing to feed..hehe

cheers all

I am experiencing the same thing on my wife's Power Book, not sure what is happening.  I use the same time machine back up for both my iMac and my wife's power book is that possibly the problem? 

TM runs so long I get frustrated and shut down my wife's PB to stop the TM back up.

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. Hopefully we will see a patch soon.

MidWestMike wrote:

 

I am experiencing the same thing on my wife's Power Book, not sure what is happening.  I use the same time machine back up for both my iMac and my wife's power book is that possibly the problem? 

Probably not.  Do you mean the same Time Capsule, or are you backing-up to the same external HD, or what?

TM runs so long I get frustrated and shut down my wife's PB to stop the TM back up.

I understand the frustration, but that may just cause more problems, such as possibly corrupting your backups.  Repair them, per #A5 in  Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Cancel the backup instead.  If it won't cancel, see #D6 there.

Try Restarting your Mac.  Sometimes that will clear the problem.

If not, see #D2 in the above link.

The intitial Time Machine back ups in Lion took a LONG time. The first was running over an hour until I quit it. There were no status notes. Then last night it seemed to be trucking along - it took 34 minutes and all was done. All subsequent back ups took the usual 30 secs or so.

Ditto.   The syslog messages are not nearly as informative either.   Always ends with 'Waiting for Spotlight..."; not too informative.  Mac OS X Lion, hear me, hear me: did backupd complete succesfully or not?   Duh!

Hello: I'm just joining in the discussion for help with my Lion, too.  Hopefully someone can help!

It's very slow and appears "stuck."  The first time Time Machine tried to run on Lion, it said I would need to go through 40 GB of material -- I thought it was just a glitch (Time Machine with a Time Capsule can be glitchy) -- stopped the back-up, and restarted.

That appears to ahve made things worse as it can't seem to get past "Preparing Backup."

I've reseted per Pondini's website (A4).

I would go on to do A5, except my Disk Utility freezes up whenever I try to drag my sparse bundle into the left window in Disk Utility.  Maybe because it's too big?

Here was my log until I canceled the backup.  Should I just let it run overnight?

I've connected my Mac to the Time Capsule with an ethernet cable.  I hear the Time Capsule clicking and making its thinking noises:

Starting standard backup

Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://Melissa%20Chan@Melissa-Chans-Time-Capsule.local/Data

Mounted network destination at mountpoint: /Volumes/Data using URL: afp://Melissa%20Chan@Melissa-Chans-Time-Capsule.local/Data

QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN

Disk image /Volumes/Data/Melissa Chan’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups

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

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

Waiting for index to be ready (100)

Waiting for index to be ready (100)

Waiting for index to be ready (100)

Waiting for index to be ready (100)

Waiting for index to be ready (100)

Waiting for index to be ready (100)

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

Finished scan

Backup canceled.