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.
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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.
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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.
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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)