time machine slow in 10.7.5

I would do the following

1. Stop backup

2. Umunt the drive and turn off drive

3. Reboot the computer.

4. After first charm. Hold option, open apple key (the one next to space bar left or right) ,p and r for two more charms then let go of keys.

5. Let the system reboot as norm.

6. Stop the spotlight.

7. Go the HD/library/preference/ look for apple.time machine...plist or something like that. There should be two files

8. Delete them

9 connect the drive and start time machine. It will ask you to select a drive.

Let me know

BrownBrady,

You may be better off disabling Spotlight using Terminal. It worked for me and I believe most others on this thread. Before doing so however, consider the cost. You'll get a speedy TM backup but Spotlight will grind to a halt.

1. First close Time Machine and disconnect your external backup drive.

2. Open Terminal and type: sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

You will be asked for your password but as you type the cursor won't move. Type your password anyway and then press enter.

3. Restart your computer, reconnect your backup drive and start Time Machine. It will take a while at first because TM will need to do its own indexing but then it should speed up. For me it took less than 20 minutes.

4. Once your backup is done, turn TM off again and disconnect your backup drive.

5. Restart your computer.

6. Open Terminal again (you won't find it in Spotlight so you'll have to use Finder and go to Applications/Utilities)

7. Type sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

8. Spotlight will now start indexing but it will take a long, long time.

Once again beware that the price of getting a speedy TM backup is a drastic increase in the time it takes Spotlight to re-index its files. Right now, my Spotlight is telling me I have to wait 3 weeks for the indexing to complete. Also note that you'll need to disable Spotlight again each time you want TM to continue with its incremental backups.

I had the same issue. I am not sure why this solution worked, but it did, to my surprise (even if it is probably too drastic)

- Clone the internal HD via Carbon Copy Cloner on an external drive

- Format the internal HD partition

- Do an install of 10.7.5 throught the recovery partition.

- Copy back only the important files from the CCC clone (application, application support, documents...), through the Finder copy tool.

Since then I did not have any problem using TM. I realize this is not a good solution, as it implies starting back from stracht, but hey, it worked well enough for me.

Best,

Guillaume

Happy might not be the correct word 😀.

But yes, it still works…

michaelfromseal beach wrote:

Report from the Front:

Apple tech support reports that the engineers are aware that this is a widespread problem and are working toward a fix; they've had many reports. They're advising that restoring to 10.7.4 is an adequate fix until a patch or a 10.7.6 upgrade is issued.

Restore can be done from a time machine backup; I was instructed to restart the iMac while holding down the option key; this brings up a menu including option to launch HD recovery, which in turn offers option to restore from Time Machine. From there it's a simple step to select any recent backup under 10.7.4 --I chose one from the morning of Sept. 18, the day before 10.7.5 (and ML) were released. Restore erases the HD and reloads 10.7.4 and all abacked up data and programs.

Obviously for safety you should separately back up onto pen drive, cloud, etc., all files started or changed since that date, though I believe once the restore is completed TM will have post-10.7.5 files still accessible.

Took my machine (1 TB HD with 800 GB still free) about two hours to complete restore. Now is running on 10.7.4. Spotlight reindexed in about 1 hour, TM performed initial backup in about 2.5 hrs, and only a few minutes for two subsequent partials. So far, so good.

Thanks for that, after frigging around with various fixes on here decided to go back in time to 10.7.4. I had to hold down Command+R, not Option key.

Hi All,

I too have been trying to sort this on my girfriends MB and have used Larry's Apple script solution on page 5 (Thanks Larry) Does anyone know if Apple have actually resolved this issue yet? And if so where it can be found?

Thankyou in advance,

Damian

Would anyone recommend taking the plunge to pay the $20 for an upgrade to Mountain Lion? I've seen a few comments about Mountain Lion on this thread but nothing so alarming as the TM/Spotlight disaster we're all experiencing with Lion 10.7.5.

If your hardware is supported, I recommend it. I have it installed on my Late 2008 MBP and I am happy with it.

Yeh, I guess that's the risk. When I did the OS 10.7.5 upgrade I lost use of my Samsung printer. Who knows what ML will do. App store reviews on ML are mixed. Several say it's a power hog and eats up the battery life in double time.

I installed ML on my MBP Unibody 2008 and it works fine. 10.8.2 seems to have resolved the main issues regarding the battery consumption.

And no major issue with Spotlight. Even though it doesn't get better either... :-)

[I must add that I don't use some recent features of Time Machine such as local backups.]

I'm not experiencing this issue after the upgrade. Prior to the upgrade, I had done a permissions repair. There was also another poster that claimed a permissions repair fixed his issue. Further, several folks have claimed that a fresh OSX install and/or upgrading to Mountain Lion fixed the issue. Re-installing the OS would also make sure all the permissions are correct. Is it possible that repairing permissions from either safe mode or the recovery console might help others who *are* experiencing the slowness issue? Certainly it wouldn't be the first time that a process performed poorly due to permissions. Just a thought.

This is inacceptable, Apple Inc.

Fix this, quick.

Apple are NOT reading the support communities.

It's useless to complain here.

Bakerchief wrote:

Would anyone recommend taking the plunge to pay the $20 for an upgrade to Mountain Lion?

I recommend it. My laptop batteries last longer in ML than Lion, and ML is an overall genuine improvement. If you want to change your mind you can always restore Lion - it's painless and easy, and one of the major advantages of using Time Machine.

There have been some complaints but there always are. This is true of every Mac OS upgrade for the past couple of decades. From a historical perspective though, there have been fewer for Mountain Lion than any other OS X upgrade.

Whatever printer / scanner problems you had were most likely result of upgrading from Snow Leopard to Lion, and are not likely to be repeated when upgrading from Lion to Mountain Lion.

I responded to that other thread BTW - I think your Samsung MFC device problems are fixable.

I have same issue, It's an issue with spotlight. I called Apple, they disabled my spotlight (after 5 calls) and Time Machine now works perfect