Q: time machine very slow with mountain lion

This is my first post on the Apple Discussion boards.  I was having the same problem with Time Machine.  I found (that for me) it has something to do with Dropbox.  So I upgraded Dropbox to the newest version, then turned it off.  I then started my Time Machine backup and it performed very well.

I use Dropbox a lot, and don't plan on stopping using it.  I am hoping while the newest version of Dropbox is running that it won't make Time Machine slow to it's previous crawl speed.

**Note -- After enabling Dropbox again, I noticed that the incremental Time Machine backup was running painfully slow again.  So I exited Dropbox, and Time Machine instantly resumed its regular speed of backing up.  So, in my case, all my Time Machine speed issues are directly related to Dropbox (v1.4.21).  Hope this helps some of you who spent as much time as I did searching for a valid explanation.

Just as an update on my situation and for the benefit of others, I have been working with AppleCare support. They have suggested uninstalling many different apps. I have tried uninstalling all of the following apps from my machine:

1. Kaspersky Internet Security (uninstalled several weeks ago). I don't think there are any other anti-virus or firewall progs on my system.
2. Google Chrome
3. Get Backup 2 (Never used. Included with Toast)
4. 1Password
5. Dropbox
6. Skydrive
7. Google Drive
8. Carbon Copy Cloner
9. Parallels 8
10. Growl

My problem is not slow performance, but rather that the TM backup freezes completely. There will be no network or disk activity even after several hours. Uninstalling all of these apps (all together) did not solve my problem.

I am trying to back up my MacBook Pro Retina to a Mac Mini Server, both running ML 10.8.2.

Exaclty the same problem here.

The supplemental updated solved thing for 10.7.5 macs. Upgrading my networked Macmini on which the TM backups are stored to OS X server sloved the slowness problem on all macs running 10.8.2.

But on my Retina 15 the time machine backup always freezes at some points (and i think I have tried most of the tricks suggested in the previous posts).

Maybee its just because Apple sold a lot of retina 15 but it seems to me that a lot of people strongly affected by this TM issues are using Retina 15 MBP's. I am wondering if what we need is not more a firmware or software update for the retina that an general 10.8.2 fix

I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I wonder if the new 2.0 update for MacBook Pro and MBA will address this issue?

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1609

I don't know if this adds anything to the discussion, but I've noticed that in 10.8.2 it takes a full 15 seconds on my Mac Pro with SSD for the TimeMachine preferences to open to the desktop.   The same is true for the three different model MBPs on my LAN.  If I remember correctly, prior to 10.8.2 this happened almost instantly.  This just may be a reflection of the fundamental problems with TM under 10.8.2.

Has anyone else noticed this as well?

John

I downloaded the file and tried to install it.  I get the error "This software is not supported on your system".

I have a new MBP Retina just purchased 2 weeks ago.  Maybe the update is already included on my system?

John

I was hoping so, but no such luck.

After installing the 2.0 update, I tried a fresh network backup from my Retina MBP to my Time Machine volume residing on my iMac. I disabled Spotlight indexing. Both Macs were connected via gigabit Ethernet with wireless disabled.

At 7:19AM, Time Machine started the backup. It showed "Preparing backup..." The TM disk on my iMac was successfully mounted by the MBP.

Logs like the ones below were repeated over and over.

11/9/2012 7:22:16.668 AM mdworker[451]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

11/9/2012 7:22:16.000 AM kernel[0]: Sandbox: sandboxd(452) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd

11/9/2012 7:22:16.720 AM sandboxd[452]: ([450]) mdworker(450) deny mach-lookup com.apple.ls.boxd

The SparseBundle on the TM volume grew slowly to 820MB until 7:53AM, when the SpareseBundle was successfully mounted, and the log indicated the backup was starting:

11/9/2012 7:53:19.245 AM com.apple.backupd[415]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

TM still showed "Preparing backup..." The errors above still continued to flood the log, and nothing was ever written to the mounted volume.

At 8:09AM, I cancelled the backup. TM status never changed from "Preparing backup..."

I manually started the backup again. The log showed that the TM volume and SparseBundle were already mounted, but the TM status never changed from "Looking for backup disk..." Again, nothing was ever written to the mounted volume.

At 9:36AM, I cancelled the backup again and restarted it.

Still, despite indicating that the TM volume and SparseBundle were already mounted, TM just showed "Looking for backup disk..."

I am beyond frustrated.

Exactly the same issues for me. I just got an e-mail from AppleCare. They apparently have heard back from engineering and want to talk to me again. Hopefully I can talk to them tomorrow.

Hello,

I thought I'd add my woes into the mix.

I have a mid 2010 27" iMac, running ML, and have up until now had no problems with Time Machine.

In fact my iMac has just had the HD replaced under the Seagate HD replacement program, and I used my Time Machine backup to fully restore my system. It worked a treat.

Now I notice Time Machine is dog slow when it tires to do a backup. It looks like it's trying to do a backup from scratch - 468Gb (the size of all my files), not simply append to what it already has. I am using the same external HD for my Time Machine back ups.

Really frustrating as I'm not looking forward to having my iMac try and back everything up over a number of days...

Right, I too have this problem and having done lots of testing and trying the various tips and tricks posted, I at least narrowed the problem down (to some degree).

Setup:

• Desktop Mac Pro (2008) has built-in disk for the TM backups (sparsebundles on NW share) of our two laptops. Currently this machine is at 10.8.2 (and this is when the problems began).
• Laptop 1 (2010 Mac Book Pro) still running OS X 10.7.5 – TM seems to work ok still via WiFi (54mbps)
• Laptop 2 (2010 Mac Book Pro) problems with TM backups since OS X update of desktop mac, just updated to 10.8.2 (but this hasn't helped). To speed things up I usually have Laptop 2 connected directly to the Desktop machine (1Gb connection, no router in between, direct cable connection)

Status:

• Laptop 1 seems to have no TM backup issues (perhaps slower, but have not really taken close look). This machine so far has been backing up exclusively via our 54mbps wifi.
• TM backup of Laptop 2 on the other hand is ridiculously slow, with backups stuck for LONG times with no progress and no network/CPU usage. Both when under 10.7.5 and now under 10.8.2 with a direct network connection between laptop and desktop

Findings:

• Booting the desktop back into 10.7.5 (I still have the previous OS X install available as a seperate partition) gave me normal speeds again (tested when laptop still on 10.7.5 too). So the problem was definitely introduced with the installation of 10.8.2 on the desktop (clean install by the way).
• Disconnection the direct connection between laptop and desktop and letting it backup over our (albeit slow) wifi network seems to improve things; backups now at least seem to have continuous progress and actually finish (constant nw activity and cpu load).

So my conclusion now is that Mountain Lion has a severe issue with networking and/or remote sparse bundles, causing all (or at least much) of our Time Machine backup grief.

Hope Apple solves this real soon!

Here is my progress so far.

I've continued to work with 2nd Tier AppleCare Support. They have been working with engineering. I sent them a huge 130MB log file and a smaller 12GB log file that they asked me to create.

Engineering believes that the problem is caused third party software of some sort. It sounds as though they think that some other software is blocking TM in some way.

To test that theory, they have had me wipe my drive and install Mountain Lion from scratch. Here is what I have done so far...

• Backed up my data to an external hard drive.
• Erased my Mac partition.
• Reinstall Mountain Lion 10.8.2 from scratch with only power and a Thunderbolt->Ethernet adapter connected. No third-party devices attached to MBPR.
• I installed all software updates including OSX, iPhoto, iMovie, and Garage Band.
• I deleted my previous .sparsebundle file from the server.
• Started a Time Machine backup to the server at 6:36AM this morning. Disk Utility showed 27.59GB used on the partition.
  • Time Machine said 10.62GB to be backed up.
  • At 6:49AM, the total file size changed to 8.96GB. Then the backup completed successfully at the same time (roughly).
  • The problem with this test is that there isn't much data. Before, the backup always went further than 10.62GB (or 8.96GB) before freezing. But, still, it is a baby step to try to narrow down the problem.
• I turned off TM and removed the backup destination from TM System Preferences.
• I deleted the .sparesebundle file from the server again.
• I am now manually copying all of my home folder data from the external drive back onto my MBPR, but to a separate folder on the drive.

The file copy is going to take about 4 hours. Once that is done, I will try another backup. It should have about 470GB of data to backup. If it works, it would almost certainly point to offending 3rd party software of some sort. Then, of course, Apple will tell me that it is my problem to figure out which 3rd party software is the problem.

If it doesn't work, it will point to a problem with OSX because I have not installed any third party software at all yet. Actually, my hope is that TM freezes on this second backup test. We'll see. I will post again when I find out more.

It would have been awfully nice if the copious log files would actually point to the problem file(s) instead of causing me to have to try all these things. But, I suppose in order to do that, the logs would have to log info on every single file that gets backed up. Probably not practical to do so.

I'm having similar problems too - directly after installing Mountain Lion.

Time Machine is telling me I have 54GB to backup, but after being Connected via usb2 now for over 8 hours its only transfered 4.3GB.

Tis is shocking performance and I'm really concerned about his, I travel a lot through work and simply cant keep connected to both power and this backup drive for any longer than 16hrs... this is never going to happen.

I've used Supper Dupper in the past and it worked perfectly well - so I ave no choice but to go dow  that route. For anybody else reading this after waiting for an hour or so - just download it and use it right away - because otherwise your going to be ordering a ot of pizza waiting at the office for this!

Some workarounds were tested successifully in older posts (around page 12) like fixing permission on file system. You may give a try.

I'm now running ML 10.8.2 and Time Machine is working like a charm on both Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS based NAS and USB2 connected WD Passport external drive.

Found also some deadlock conditions while some intensive disk application are working together, just as example:

• Time Machine and Spotlight indexing
• Spotlight indexing and Outlook for Mac in Office 2011 (even in normal day-by-day usage)
• Outlook and Time Machine

therefore when doing TM avoid to use Outlook client (use OWA web client, if provided by your system administrator)  and/or reindexing Spotlight for instance to incour into these deadlocks.

That's just a workaround in my opinion... althoght I'm not expecting Apple to fix Outlook, I'm still waiting Apple to declare that TM vs Spotlight issues are fixed.

BR, Tiziano

An issue with backup over Ethernet is something I had suspected but thought too ludicrous to test. My issue with backing up started when I got the Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter, which was around the time 10.8.2 came out.

After reading your post about backing up working over WiFi, I decided to try it.

Lo and behold, my MBP is backing up over WiFi to my iMac's Time Machine disk. If I connect via Ethernet, the sparesebundle mounts, but the backup never progresses. Very strange...

HayoBaan wrote:

 

• Disconnection the direct connection between laptop and desktop and letting it backup over our (albeit slow) wifi network seems to improve things; backups now at least seem to have continuous progress and actually finish (constant nw activity and cpu load).

 

So my conclusion now is that Mountain Lion has a severe issue with networking and/or remote sparse bundles, causing all (or at least much) of our Time Machine backup grief.