time machine very slow with mountain lion

giving the ML server addon a try as we speak. interesting observation: once installed the server app showed 10 connection from the same user from the same machine! definitely something wrong there...

enabled the TimeMachine server on the server and it's using a different backup directory structure. currently the backup is still going.

For whatever reason my ML did not like the old TM backups. Just wouldn't work right. Did a quick format of the Time Capsule and started from scratch. All better now and backups are working as they should. Unfortunately old backups gone, but not a problem for me. Make sure you understand that that will happen before doing this.

Update: 7:21pm, nearly 6 hours later, it says "10.48 GB of 12.69 GB - about 2 hours". Bleeeehhhh. I'm wondering if I should wait for a fix before doing my initial backup.

Terranwolf wrote:

I'm seeing a similar issue as Contradel.

I just bought a retina MBP (built Jul 26) that had Lion installed on it. Immediately I downloaded ML, installed it, and then ran Time Machine. For giggles I was going to use my 5th gen iPod as my backup device but it ended up saying "2 days remaining" for the 12.69GB backup. Riiiight. Then I went to do a 11MB/s write sd card and have had it running since 1am last night. Currently (12:42 PM, nearly 12 hours later) says "8.31GB of 12.69 GB - about 4 hours".

Something has to be not working right with ML.

the ML server app seems to have solved my issues :-) complete update of my airbook (123GB) backed up in about 7 hours over WiFi. network sharing still works. backup still works.

so, well worth the CHF 20.00. plus you get a nice UI for controlling the services.

Add me to those experiencing slow ML Time Machine backups over WiFi, but contrary to at least one reply, my backups over Ethernet are proceeding as quickly as one would expect for 100BaseT (50GB in about an hour and a half). Numerous WiFi diagnostics fail to point to a particular problem with my WiFi network (though I'm not expert and could be missing something) - at least I can tell that the throughput I'm getting for internet connections is greater than what would account for the time it's taking to backup a few GB (transfer rate to backup can be measured in kbps, not mbps).

I have this problem as well. My time machine files (for my MB Pro and MacMini) are on disks on a wireless network-connected machine. Machine to machine file transfers are as expected. When I check a TM backup, the file transfer rate is at telagraph speeds.

Oddly when I use TM to find an old file the performance is decent. The problem is when running a TM back up. My back up file today is nearly 10GB. At the rate of back up it will be next month before it is complete. Thus, TM is not usable at the moment.

I will live wih not backing up for a while and I do understand that I can make a hardwire connection, but I hopw Apple gets this fixed soon.

The same is happening here. Too, too slow in preparing and in doing the back up after ML. MBP late 2010, time capsule: La Cie 1Tb.

I hope Apple recognize the bug and issue a patch ASAP.

Same here to a giga bit network drive. Should be going very fast. I also keep having an issue with my external firewire and DVD drive randomly unmounting. My system log files are a constant scroll of entries. I have not really updated or added alot of big/numerous files. So confused why I keep incrementally needing to back up 5-10 gb of (new?) data.

As I mentioned earlier, the method in this post worked for me as a fix. It changes the backup disk from being accessed by an AFP name on the network to a direct IP address. I believe the postee also found the share name has changed in ML too. Once I selected the backup disk this way it starting working at normal speeds again.

I followed TStam's advice and the back ups are working smoothly!!!!!!! 😉

Glad it worked. Been watching mine for a while now, still ok. This also fixed another problem I was having which was that when two computers tried to use time capsule at the same time, the second one that tried could not find the disc and the backup failed. Now both are working even at the same time.

For anyone who still have problems. Please use this form to contact Apple. I must admit I expected a patch by now.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

In reading through the replies, some clarification would be helpful. I don't particularly want to reformat the Time Capsule drive and start over because another laptop is also being backed up to it (Snow Leopard, 2011 15" MacBook Pro, no issues with wireless backup speed). I've seen some in this thread who have the slow wireless, but adequate/good wired backup on ML (like me - I just turn off Time Machine while I'm on WiFi and turn it back on when I can connect via ethernet until there's a resolution). However, I've seen others who are not getting connected to the disk at all - that's not my issue. Does the reformat address the former, the latter, or both?

Also, something I noticed since I turned Time Machine off except when I'm connected to the Time Capsule over ethernet is that my mid-2008 15" MacBook Pro is running considerably cooler. I noticed that I was getting a lot of fan activity during endless (literally) backup cycles over WiFi. It seems likely this is related - something is going wrong with the WiFi backup and it's chewing up processor cycles in the process.

I had drive problems after upgrading to Mountain Lion; however mine were more related to my external drive with iTunes randomly unmounting itself. Additionally my Superdrive kept spitting out DVDs and my console was a twitter with crash reports. My end solution was to wipe the internal drive, reinstall ML, and then manually re-installing applications.

During this process I had access to a fantasticly incredible Apple Senior Advisor. (not being sarcastic, we were like a dream team of user and tech. LOL) He had me mount the sparse.bundle image on my Time Machine backup (which is a Lacie NetworkMax 4TB drive) and then I could manually browse the backup via Finder. The dates of each incremental backup show up as folders. Under that folder, I then can see each drive that was backed up. That is how he had me manually get my /User files back.

Additionally, I asked about when I feel like my current and refreshed setup was stable how Time Machine would react. He said it would either start a new or conclude the machine is the same and just do an incremental backup. If it starts a new backup, I will most likely need to clear some space eventually. In order to do that, he said to mount the sparse.bundle (double click or right click/mount). You can then right click and delete the backup.backup (or whatever its called). That will clear your space for your new Time Machine backup.

Sorry that if this is overly verbose. I just wanted to make sure I stated the original problem, how it was resolved, and then expalin the options I was told to use to clean up prior backups.

I hope that helps!

I'm also seeing extremely slow Time Machine backups. I've only had my Mac for a week, and am using a USB2 hard drive for Time Machine.

The initial backup and every backup since has been super fast and the expected speed, however today I am trying to backup and it is backing up literally 1kb/minute with 4GB to go!

Ridiculous