Time Machine Very Slow

Question

Level 2

157 points

Time Machine Very Slow

The hourly backups of my system disk are taking over 20 minutes -- even when virtually nothing has changed. It's driving me nuts. If anybody can help, I'd really appreciate it. I'm running 10.6.7 on a 3 year old Macbook Pro, backing up to a 1.5 TB OWC drive. Four partitions on the drive, one dedicated to TM. The TM partition was recently erased, so there's only about a week of backups there.

I've checked Pondini's Time Machine - Troubleshooting page, and I think I've done everything mentioned in section D2 (http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/D2.html). No connection problems. No recent update of system software. No other problems with the backup drive. Preferences has Allow Disk to Sleep turned off. I've repaired the source and destination drives, and repaired permissions on the source, deleted the TM preferences (plist) and restarted.

Looking at the logs using the Backup Buddy widget, I see the same thing every time -- with almost identical file counts. No pre-backup thinning needed. Roughly 1 GB requested. Then, each time, TM copies about 89000 files, using anywhere from 40 to 100 MB. It takes 10 minutes to do this. Then the same messages again. No prebackup thinning. Roughly 1 GB requested. About 29000 files copied using about 45K to 40 MB -- and again it takes 10 minutes to do it.

I've pasted the logs of four consecutive backups below. Note that virtually nothing changed from one backup to the next.

Something is very fishy here. Anybody got any ideas? Many thanks in advance for your help.

Steve

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Starting standard backup

Backing up to: /Volumes/OWC-Time_Machine/Backups.backupdb

No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.19 GB requested (including padding), 102.40 GB available

Copied 89158 files (117.4 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.05 GB requested (including padding), 102.26 GB available

Copied 29040 files (47 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.

Starting post-backup thinning

Deleted backup /Volumes/OWC-Time_Machine/Backups.backupdb/Steve Cohen’s Computer/2011-08-05-150521: 102.28 GB now available

Deleted backup /Volumes/OWC-Time_Machine/Backups.backupdb/Steve Cohen’s Computer/2011-08-05-140743: 102.42 GB now available

Post-back up thinning complete: 2 expired backups removed

Backup completed successfully.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Starting standard backup

Backing up to: /Volumes/OWC-Time_Machine/Backups.backupdb

No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.10 GB requested (including padding), 102.42 GB available

Copied 89160 files (41.9 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.08 GB requested (including padding), 102.36 GB available

Copied 29041 files (41.3 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

Starting post-backup thinning

No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist

Backup completed successfully.

Notice that the steps are the same, and the number of files in each step are almost the same.

And get this: Each step takes 10 minutes. To backup 41.9 MB -- 10 minutes. To backup 41.3 MB -- 8 minutes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Starting standard backup

Backing up to: /Volumes/OWC-Time_Machine/Backups.backupdb

No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.10 GB requested (including padding), 102.38 GB available

Copied 89155 files (41.8 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.06 GB requested (including padding), 102.32 GB available

Copied 29036 files (281 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.

Starting post-backup thinning

Deleted backup /Volumes/OWC-Time_Machine/Backups.backupdb/Steve Cohen’s Computer/2011-08-05-170533: 102.41 GB now available

Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed

Backup completed successfully.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Starting standard backup

Backing up to: /Volumes/OWC-Time_Machine/Backups.backupdb

No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.08 GB requested (including padding), 102.41 GB available

Copied 89168 files (26.9 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.09 GB requested (including padding), 102.36 GB available

Copied 29048 files (27.6 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

Starting post-backup thinning

No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist

Backup completed successfully.

15, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Aug 6, 2011 6:24 PM

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Answer 1

Steve Cohen4 Author

Level 2

157 points

Aug 7, 2011 8:56 AM in response to Steve Cohen4

Last night I erased the TM backup partition and started over. Again. Full backup did not take too long -- just a couple of hours to do 125 GB.

But this AM the hourly backups are still taking twenty minutes, backing up about 90,000 tiny files = 40 MB (each file averages to less than 1K). As I sit here, it is taking ten minutes to back up 3.5 Megabytes of data.

I've read several threads here about slow backups, but these are associated with Lion or with an SSD drive. I've got Snow Leopard and a normal spinning disk.

Logs for an incremental and full backup are below. There's a new error message: "Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed." And last night I saw "CoreEndianFlipData: error -4940 returned for rsrc type FREF (id 130, length 7, native = no)"

I'm out of ideas. Many thanks to anybody who can offer a suggestion!!

Steve

----------------------------------------------

Last Incremental Backup:

Starting standard backup

Backing up to: /Volumes/OWC-Time_Machine/Backups.backupdb

No pre-backup thinning needed: 2.03 GB requested (including padding), 105.91 GB available

Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed.

Copied 89120 files (50.4 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

No pre-backup thinning needed: 2.10 GB requested (including padding), 105.60 GB available

Copied 29035 files (3.5 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

Starting post-backup thinning

No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist

Backup completed successfully.

Full Backup after disk was erased:

Starting standard backup

Backing up to: /Volumes/OWC-Time_Machine/Backups.backupdb

Backup content size: 120.9 GB excluded items size: 6.2 GB for volume Macintosh HD

No pre-backup thinning needed: 137.69 GB requested (including padding), 219.58 GB available

Waiting for index to be ready (101)

SystemFlippers: didn't consume all data for vers ID 1 (pBase = 0x102970050, p = 0x10297005d, pEnd = 0x10297005e)

SystemFlippers: didn't consume all data for vers ID 1 (pBase = 0x1035ebb1c, p = 0x1035ebb30, pEnd = 0x1035ebb31)

Copied 41.8 GB of 114.7 GB, 213780 of 957126 items

CoreEndianFlipData: error -4940 returned for rsrc type FREF (id 130, length 7, native = no)

CoreEndianFlipData: error -4940 returned for rsrc type FREF (id 129, length 7, native = no)

Copied 101.2 GB of 114.7 GB, 394174 of 957126 items

Copied 395871 files (109.1 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.

No pre-backup thinning needed: 2.02 GB requested (including padding), 106.07 GB available

Copied 29033 files (2.0 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.

Starting post-backup thinning

No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist

Backup completed successfully.

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Answer 2

Steve Cohen4 Author

Level 2

157 points

Aug 7, 2011 9:16 AM in response to Steve Cohen4

I've now dragged the TM backup volume to the Spotlight Privacy Pane, excluding it from Spotlight indexing. No change. Same time to back up, and always almost exactly the same number of files (plus or minus 5 files or so, sometimes exactly the same number).

It's as if TM doesn't know which files need backing up -- and it always decides that the same tiny files need to be backed up.

Steve

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Answer 3

Aug 7, 2011 3:10 PM in response to Steve Cohen4

My problems began when I used Migration Assistant to transfer everything, including my settings. I was told this was a Bad Thing to bring settings from my old G5 PowerMac to my new i7 iMac. Reinstalling, which seems to automatically do a clean install, made things better. It did eliminate the CoreEndian errors, which at the very least made me feel better.

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Answer 4

Steve Cohen4 Author

Level 2

157 points

Aug 13, 2011 1:47 PM in response to Mark Castleman

Thanks. I'm hoping I don't have to reinstall. Based on another post regarding slow backups, I just tried eliminating everything non-essential from my login (startup) items. No love there -- it was just a mouse driver and Dropbox. Removing them didn't help.

I have a big folder on the desktop, full of files. (19,000 items 7 GB). Could that be slowing the backup down?

My only other thought is to run Disk Warrior.

Anybody have any suggestions?

Steve

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Answer 5

Aug 14, 2011 10:07 AM in response to Steve Cohen4

Lurking here because I have the same issue. In particular, "cleaning up" takes a long time. I am thinking it may have something to do with my large imap mailboxes. No errors in Time Machine. It is just slow. I use a Time Capsule. Luckily, it looks as though it times the next hourly backup to begin an hour after the last one ends, so that helps.

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Answer 6

Aug 14, 2011 10:35 AM in response to Steve Cohen4

My TM machine backups have finally gotten down to 1-2 minutes each after much turmoil. I don't know which of these things was the final fix but they are things you could try:

1) If you have an old copy of Tech Tool (and possible Disk Warrior) delete it. At some point I will update things to the newest version of TT but I have not done that yet.

2) If you have any added System Preference panes make sure they are the latest ones that are Intel native or Universal.

3) Repair the permissions on your boot drive. (You may have to do this several times, even if no errors are found)

4) If you are using an external drive for TM update the firmware, even if the installer says you have the latest version. When I re-loaded the firmware on my WD drive things improved a great deal so there may be something significant about loading the firmware while running Snow Leopard.

5) Re-install Snow Leopard. The SL installer automatically does what used to be called an Archive and Install so it does not effect your user accounts.

6) If you have migrated from an older machine do not use the same name for your TM backup drive.

This worked for me, but it does feel one step removed from magic.

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Answer 7

Steve Cohen4 Author

Level 2

157 points

Aug 14, 2011 11:49 AM in response to Mark Castleman

Magic indeed. But thanks for the suggestions. I'll try all that stuff. I've repaired permissions many times. The hard drive comes from Other World Computing and I could find no firmware updates on their site. Tech Tool is on my drive -- version 3 (from 2009). I'll go through the preference panes and delete what I can. Then Disk Warrior, which I don't normally use, but which has been recommended to me.

What's strange is that every backup is more or less the same. Two steps. The first one backs up about 90,000 items, second one about 30,000. The amount of data is trivial. Under 100 MB, often a lot less. And each step takes about 10 minutes. You can see the progress as "Backing up 1.6 MB of 17 MB" and then, a good ten or twenty seconds later it'll say "Backing up 2.0 MB of 17 MB."

So a) it''s backing up the same files over and over again, and b) it's doing it very slowly.

Any thoughts about that?

Steve

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Answer 8

Steve Cohen4 Author

Level 2

157 points

Aug 20, 2011 11:43 AM in response to Steve Cohen4

Well, after trying everything, I ran Disk Warrior this morning. And that did it. So far, I've only backed up once since replacing the directory with DW, but prior to the replacement an incremental backup took 20 minutes. Afterwards, it took 2 or 3. None of the 90,000 files that had to be backed up. None of the double backups, where it would back up 90,000 and then 20,000 files in a second step.

For whatever it is worth, this was a computer that in other ways seemed to be functioning normally, running all kinds of applications. I run Disk Utility every week and repair permissions every week. But for whatever reason, there were problems with its directory, which really slowed down TM. Disk Warrior seems to have fixed it.

And I am a very happy camper.

Steve

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Answer 9

Aug 21, 2011 10:22 AM in response to Steve Cohen4

Thanks! I went ahead and ordered the Diskwarrior upgrade today. Did you run Diskwarrior on your startup disk, your time machine disk, or both?

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Answer 10

Steve Cohen4 Author

Level 2

157 points

Aug 21, 2011 11:36 AM in response to Linda Swenberg

Sorry if I wasn't clear -- on the startup disk, the disk I was backing up. I first cloned that disk using SuperDuper, just to be safe, if something went wrong. Many friends told me that DW isn't dangerous and has saved their bacon, but I wasn't taking any chances. Be sure to check out the Report that it gives you (hit the details button for specifics).

I ran DW off the DVD they send you. One glitch -- if you want to save the report, be sure to specify a location. In my case, it defaulted to the DVD and thus didn't save it.

Good luck!

Steve

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Answer 11

Aug 27, 2011 9:08 AM in response to Steve Cohen4

This didn't work for me. I'm going to try the new capability of Disk Warrior to repair Time Capsules (if I can figure it out)

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Answer 12

Sep 4, 2013 8:20 AM in response to Steve Cohen4

I know this thread is two years old, but I was having a similar problem to what Steve described. So I tried his advice.

When I ran the first backup after using DiskWarrior, it failed miserably. So I took the following steps. I used Disk Untility to repair the disk (no problems found). Then I repaired permissions. Then I ran DiskWarrior a second time on the boot disk.

After that, I used Disk Utility to repair the Time Machine disk (still no problems found). Some combination of these steps, however, seemed to have fixed the problem, at least for the time being.

Where my backups were taking over an hour to complete, the one I did just before writing this post took about two minutes.

I don't know how long this fix will last, but right now everything is good. If this helps someone else, then that's even better.

Andy

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Answer 13

Steve Cohen4 Author

Level 2

157 points

Sep 4, 2013 9:19 AM in response to Andy G. Moore

Andy,

For what it's worth, Mountain Lion (10.8.4 at this point) solved these problems for me. Backups are taking seconds rather than minutes, consistently. If a backup takes two minutes, that's a long one.

Steve

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Answer 14

Sep 4, 2013 6:06 PM in response to Steve Cohen4

I have some legacy software I use, so I’m sticking to Snow Leopard for the time being.

It was frustrating at times for a backup to take so long, but now after doing what I did it’s working well for now. I was actually setting the computer to come on and do the backup early in the morning, so that made it a little easier.

I think I posted mainly because if someone else is having the same problems, this might be a possible solution for them. So thanks for doing the groundwork and posting your results. It definitely helped me.

Thanks again.

Andy

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