Q: time machine very slow with mountain lion

Running a late 2011 MBP upgraded from Lion to ML with both a FireWire800 1.5TB drive only used for timemachine and a 2TB wifi TimeCapsule. The backup to the firewire is unusably slow. Yet the Timecapsule is super quick.

Hope Apple fixes this soon.

I ran "sudo tmdiagnose" and suddently my TM backup resumed normal speed ...

Weird.

My backup that was running for several days for only 190 GB is not finally finishing.

At last !

Interesting, anyone else tried this?

I gave up and connected my external to my iMac via USB and it only took 56 min to backup 85 GB. Seems that the problem is over the network (wireless/wired).

Tried running the sudo tmdiagnose

still awful slow. About 10 minutes for 100 MB, so thats 25 hours for 15 GB.

Same problem.

Backup drive is FW connected to MacMini. MacMini wired to ethernet.

My MacBook Air was backing up normally, but my MBPro (wired connection) was painfully slow or failing. Have tried all these suggestions. Then I went thru all the settings on the MBA to make sure they match the MBP, and I realized the only difference is the MBA was connected wirelss, and the MBP wired.

I shut off ethernet on the MBP and turned on Airport, and voila normal backup speed (for wireless)

So whatever is hosing Time Machine seems to be specific to the clients mode of connection, and judging from the reports here can affect either wired, wireless, or both.

I don't think the backups created are interchangeable for directly connected disks vs. over the network (i.e. the sparse bundle). So this is fine as long as you plan to stick to the same method for incremental backups.

Stewart Carlsson wrote:

 

Interesting, anyone else tried this?

 

I gave up and connected my external to my iMac via USB and it only took 56 min to backup 85 GB. Seems that the problem is over the network (wireless/wired).

Yes I know but I need something that actually does work for now. When I find a soulution I will make a new copy.

Anyone know if the very slow network backup issue is still there if running OSX Server on ML on the system being backed-up to?

Thanks

I am using a 2010 iMac and tried a completely new 250+Gb Time Machine copy to a WD Passport USB 2.0 500Gb external HD. It's taking like more than 2 days. Never took that long before. Not a web or wi-fi issue. Before Mountain Lion, should have taken 3-4 hours max. I tested the external hard drive on a another Mac with a large file transfer and there were no problems.  I also turned off all the spotlight choices. The issue has something with Mountain Lion. 

• Has anyone heard from Apple acknowledging the issue and that they are working to resolve the problem?

I have tried and 1.8 MB since yesterday...

Did anyone tryed to run "sudo tmdiagnose" in Terminal ?

It really solved all my problems with TM.

Did anyone tryed to run "sudo tmdiagnose" in Terminal ?

It really solved all my problems with TM.

Dolfke,

I may not be the only one having what is probable a simple questions:  Does one just type "sudo tmdiagnose"   in the terminal prompt?  Thanks.

How to run tmdiagnose

1) Launch Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app)

2) Enter the command text below followed by the Return key on the Terminal command line:

sudo tmdiagnose

3) Enter your admin password when prompted and wait for all of the tmdiagnose processes to finish.

Thanks to dolfke, running "sudo tmdiagnose" in the terninal really worked.  I couldn't tell you why, but my TM back up time increased by 10X's.

For ref:

dolfke

How to run tmdiagnose

1) Launch Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app)

2) Enter the command text below followed by the Return key on the Terminal command line:

sudo tmdiagnose

3) Enter your admin password when prompted and wait for all of the tmdiagnose processes to finish.

When I ran tmdiagnose, it looks like a script that calls a bunch of small diagnostic programs to check various things relevant to Time Machine and then the diagnostic data is dumped in /tmp.

Anyone care to explain how that could possibly "cure" the slow backup problem?