Q: time machine very slow with mountain lion

My configuration is:

- Mountain Lion 10.8.1 in all machines.

- Mac Mini with external usb hd for backups, connected via ethernet.

- iMac 27 mid 2011 via ethernet

- MBP mid 2011 via ethernet

- Ethernet is Gigabit

This is what happened:

- Every TM backups where imposible slow.

- Formated the external HD

- Shared it

- TM impossible slow.

This is what I did to try to solve it:

- Repaired all disks, and permissions.

- Unchecked 'Slow down hard drive when not in use': still impossible

- Rebooted all machines: still impossible

- Tried TM one machine at a time: still impossible

- Exclude external HD from SpotLight: still impossible

- Tried connecting via IP to the macmini: still impossible

- Tried 'sudo tmdiagnose' + restart: still impossible

- Connected both machines simultaneously via WiFi to the router and tried both of them at the same time (I don't have Time Capsule or Airport Extreme): it solved it for a while. Then the iMac kept disconnecting (tried slowing down the WiFi speed).

Now at least the iMac is backing up (21hrs for 192gb), the MBP needs more than 10,000 days. I think I'll backup one mac at a time....

Bottom line is: I don't know what factor or combination of factors did the trick. Also: this *****.

Problem solved!

This is what I did:

- Created a Virtual Machine (VMWare Fusion 5) in MacMini, with ML. 2,5Gb RAM, 200Gb HD (preallocated) and Installed Server App.

- Configured Server inside VM for time machine with external HD.

- Connected iMac & MBP to ML Server Backup folder

- Now TM from iMac and MBP work as expected (both at the same time, iMac 171Gb remaining in 6 hours and MBP 9Gb remaining in 14 minutes).

Notes:

I bought the MacMini to use it as a Server. I have a Windows 2008 R2 (SQL Server, IIS, etc) virtualized that I run there (as I said with VMWare Fusion 5).

I thought I could also use the MacMini to act as a local server for my network, so I installed Server App.

When iMac & MBP did backups Inactive Memory ate all available RAM (I have 8Gb, the Windows Server has 3Gb allocated, so there was always about 3Gb of free RAM in the MacMini)

The Inactive Memory problem took my free RAM to ZERO. That practically stopped the MacMini and the virtualized Windows Server (I had a real problem there trying to purge and make things work again). Purge command is not a solution. Inactive memory kept growing. Had to manually purge several times a day. There are some apps that do that for you, but I don't think 'purging' constantly is a good idea.

I uninstalled Server App but some things were broken.

I had to reinstall the MacMini without the Server. That solved the Inactive Memory problem, but I lost networked backup.

So basically, having the ML with the Server app inside a VM doesn't use the MacMini Inactive Memory, everything goes smoothly, and I can make real fast TM backups from both iMac & MBP simultaneously.

Both Windows Server 2008 R2 (now I assigned 2Gb of RAM to it) and Mountain Lion with Server (with 2,5Gb of RAM assigned) run side by side in VMWare Fusion 5 without problems (at least so far).

Now MacMini has 2Gb of free RAM (I didn't purge), and 230Mb of Inactive Memory.

Hope this helps!! Greetings to all!

turning Time Machine off and then selecting backup from the menu worked for me...

Very odd.

My configuration:

[Mine]: MBP (4 years old, 10.8.1) --> Time Capsule

[Wife's]: MBP (1 year old, 10.8.1) --> Time Capsule

The connections are WI-FI, and it is the same Time Capsule for both.  My machine contains a LOT of stuff - all kinds of oddball software, development packages, etc. 174 GB  used.  My wife's is a pretty "vanilla" installation with Microsoft Office, banking software, iWork and not much else.  She uses about 80 GB of disk space.

I reconfigured my network yesterday to put the Time Capsule at a point midway between our to machines, since she has been complaining about TM being slow.

My backup took about 1.5 hours - hers took all day!  It looks like TM was doing a FULL backup on her machine, but an incremental on mine. (Both were done automatically by TM - no user interference.)

I'd like to try forcing both machines to use 2.5 Mhz networks, but I can't find where to set that up using the "new " Airport Utility, and the old (5.6) version will not install.

Any ideas?

Walt

Airport Utility - open and Edit the Time Capsule, Wireless tab, Wireless Options button, check the box for 5 GHz Network Name, Sane and Update.

FWIW, this is what worked to restore my backup speed to something approaching normal.  I don't think it's the difference between full and incremental - there's something going on in the RF or something else.

It sounds like you are using Airport Utility 5.6 (the older version, which won't install on my Mac - says it's not compatible with the OS)

On the Wireless tab in Version 6.1 I see only:

Network Mode:               Extend a WirelessNetwork

Wireless Network Name: (My Name)

Wireless Security:          WPA2 Personal

Wireless Password:          ******

Verify Password:               ******

There is a "Cancel" and an "Update" button at the bottom.

So, have they taken this function away?

Still puzzled

Walt

Hmmm.  I'm using Airport Utility 6.1 (610.31).  There's not a "Wireless Options..." button above the Cancel & Update buttons?  That's where the option to give the 5GHz network a different name resides.

OK, my network condifuration is as follows (but it displays vertically in Airport Utility):

Internet ____________ Apple - - - - - - - - Walt's Time Capsule

On "Walt's Time Capsule" all that is between the "Verify Password" line and the two buttons is blank space.

BUT

When I edit the Airport Extreme ("Apple") then I see tha Wireless Options button!  I guess that makes sense since the Time Capsule is a "slave" to the Airport Extreme.

I'm going to change it now and we'll see if that helps.

Thanks for your help!

Walt

For me it's not a problem of time machine only. It's an issue between ML and external hard drives. Because any time that I access my 1gb LaCie from the finder using firewire 800 or from an USB 2.0 it took a while to get access to it.

Moreover, now I'm trying to use Crash Plan with that external drive and it's painfully slow as TM.

Okay, one day later - it looks as if TM is behaving on my wife's machine again.

I have a question / theory:

The actual choice on the Advanced Wireless Options / Radio Mode reads, "802.11n only (2.4 GHz)."

The default option is 802.11n (b/g compatible).  I know that with one of my older APs, even though it was set up for 802.11n, as soon as a client associated with 802.11b, the speed immediatelt dropped to 11 MB (actually closer to 5 if it's encrypted).  If that's the case, it goes a long way toward explaining the reduced throughput to the Time Capsule and to any other attached drives.

Countering that, I find that my really old HTC 8925 phone, which certainly has only an 802.11b radio, can connect to the network despite the setting as 802.11n only.

I'd be interested in your ieas/observations.

Walt

I've tried both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 on a brand new high-end MacBook Pro connected to new Seagate external drives and the throughput is very slow when using TM.  the problem seems to be restricted to the TM, since other transfers seem to work fine.  I've tried all the solutions offered in this group and nothing works to speed things up.  AppleCare has worked on the problem and they can't solve the problem either.

-Al

I am on a 2012 MacMini with 2 500GB internal drives and a LaCie 6TB 2big Thunderbolt external drive. The LaCie is set up with RAID-0 (striped). I had originally partitioned one of the two 3TB devices to 3-1TB partitions, and left the other as 1-3TB partition. I told TM to use the 3TB partition to back up approx. 226GB of data on its initial run. This is not a new MacMini. It's about 2 to 3 months old, so Spotlight indexing should not be an issue. After about 5 hours of backing up, I had transferred 1.34GB and TM was telling me that there were 21 days left. Obviously, this was not practical, so I killed it, and re-partitioned the 3TB partition to 3-1TB partitions, thinking (because I don't know much about RAID) that the two devices might actually need to have the same number of partitions. I don't really think that's the case, but what the heck? I selected one of the new 1TB partitions as the target for TM and have re-started the backup. It has spent about 30 minutes Cleaning up... in preparation to begin the backup. I will report back when I have some information as to whether it copies data any more quickly. Carbon Copy Cloner takes about 1hr 25m to clone my boot drive (204GB of data) to a different 1TB partition on the LaCie drive.

One other interesting piece of info. I have my 2nd internal hard drive managed by Ten's Complement's ZEVO zfs software which claims to be completely compatible with TM in regard to being able to be used as a source for backup up via TM. I purposely did not exclude the drive from what I told TM to backup (I removed it from the default list of drives to be excluded), but, when I went to look at the configuration during the 4 hours that TM was busy copying 1.34GB of data, the drive had magically reappeared in the list of drives to be excluded from the backup. I will contact GreenBytes on that issue, just wanted to post that here so that others may run across it.

It's now 3-1/4 hrs after starting the backup a 2nd time. I've got 1.07 GB copied with 22 days left. Is there no explanation for this from Apple? It seems that too many people have had the problem for it not to be real. I will let this run overnight and see where it is in the morning. It's now 9:18pm local time. I started at 6:00pm.

It's now 15 hours after I started the backup and I've copied 5.71 GB and have 21 days left. Looking at Activity Monitor read/write disk activity I see anywhere from 22.0 KB/sec to 6.8 MB/sec for read and 40.0 KB/sec to 571 KB/sec for write with an average of somewhere around 200 KB/sec on both. The computer is not doing much of anything else. I'm thinking I should be seeing numbers around 100 MB/sec.

I've got a call in to Apple support. We'll see if anything comes of that.

Apple support suggested I kill the backup, and rebuild the Spotlight index to be sure that's not the issue and take two aspirin and call him in the morning. OK, he said to try the backup again after Spotlight has finished re-building its indexes and let him know if the performance has improved or not.