time machine slow in 10.7.5

Same Problem with Time Machine...

MBP late 2011, i7 2,5, 16GB RAM, Crucial M4 256GB.

TimeMachine is extremely slow since updating OS X-Lion (10.7.5 (11G56) on a MacBook Pro) today (Sept. 22).

Took 5 minutes tp prepare and then 15 minutes for the first GByte. Now stalling @1,5 GB since 5 minutes...

I can confirm what infinite vortex is saying about this issue. This is a problem with spotlight that is manifesting itself as a time machine issue.

I was trying to create a fresh TM backup on a new external HD after a failure of my previous backup drive. I noticed that time machine was quoting several days to finish my new backup. This seemed very strange so I decided to invesitgate a bit on the forums here. I read in one thread that time machine and spotlight are related/reliant on one another. My spotlight appeared to be working just fine at that point, but I figured I would reindex spotlight to see if I could fix time machine. Now spotlight is quoting a 5 day estimation to complete the reindexing. yikes.

So, something is clearly wrong with Spotlight in 10.7.5 and it's affecting or at least manifesting itself as a problem with Time Machine. I currently don't have a recent backup of my machine after my first backup failed, so I'm pretty dead in the water if something else goes wrong.... any workaround/fix for this slow spotlight/TM performance would be greatly appreciated. If I could somehow revert to 10.7.4 I would.... 😟. Thoughts?

This worked for me as well - I reverted to 10.7.4 via the original Lion installer to install 10.7 and then applying the 10.7.4 combo updater. Things appear to be back to normal, re-indexing Spotlight finished in the usual time and backups run as quickly as before updating to 10.7.5.

If I could somehow revert to 10.7.4 I would.... 😟. Thoughts?

Unfortunately it really comes down to what you feel is the lesser of a number of evils. If 10.7.5 doesn't bring you anything inparticular on a bug fix, stability or other standpoint then the best option is really reverting back to 10.7.4. If you have a friend that has a 10.7.4, or earlier, installer then you might want to try sorting something out with them.

Your other option is to go to Mountain Lion 10.8.2 but that isn't spectacular either and has its own issues.

For those with a rMBP, 10.7.5 does come with bug fixes that stops you being constantly kicked out of your user directory and back to the login window. This is an important fix so I guess it's a choice between fixing that and dealing with a broken Spotlight and TM. As an owner if one I opted to go to 10.8.2 as I'm better able to deal with the problems there rather than a problematic WindowServer in 10.7.4 (special build for the rMBP) or a broken Spotlight/TM in 10.7.5.

The remark concerning spotlight aoursed my interest. I run now on a clone copy of my 10.7.5, I prepared using SuperDuper!. ( it is free to try but worth investing for the full version).

decided to use spotless ( shareware) to simply stop the indexing altogether, rendering spotlight inactive.

And I am making a totally new time machine backup. I actually destroyed my timemachine backup thinking I had a disk problem.

Miracle. The time machine seems to run at a normal speed.

I got about 80GB of my 335GB in about 1.5 hours, on this macbook pro which is about 3 years of age, where I usually run an older system. During the night a failry recent 13" indexed only 6GB overnight and was promising to complete the jobs in a few weeks....

Let us hope that Apple fixes this sptolight issue shortly!!!

Stuck on 72mb of 6g. Had to turn off TM.

Confirmed spotlight as problem. DL'd Spotless, completely disabled spotlight, deleted all index files, restarted and TM is flying through the backup. Will need only 2 hours for a 270gb backup..... via 2.0 USB! Apple needs to fix spotlight

larry,

I let a few time machine auto run

then I restored my spotless down load nd kept bont files

Works like a charm.

this seem like a good temporary solution.

my net step

destroy all indexes and files generated py spotlight

see if the indexing work, when starting from scratch.

This will take a while cause Ia m busy at the moemtn and canot do it immediately

Disabled Spotight, backed up 13.55 Gs in 10 minutes.

Tom Murray2 wrote:

Disabled Spotight, backed up 13.55 Gs in 10 minutes.

So what you're saying is that Spotlight isn't needed for Time Machine to work. Count me in on that. While I haven't tried TM on my test 10.7.5 partition, I turned if off in Snow Leopard, and have kept it off in Lion and Mountain Lion but TM still works quickly. EasyFind from the App Store is sufficient for all the searching I do and makes Spotlight irrelevant. Occasionally I will change a partition name to keep them all straight (there are eleven, not counting external drives), and forget to add it to Spotlight Privacy; the Mac will pretty much grind to a halt until I fix it.

Quick question. I have the same issue as described above with TM and spotlight. I've been putting off upgrading to Mountain Lion. Would that solve the issue also?

beezedogg wrote:

Quick question. I have the same issue as described above with TM and spotlight. I've been putting off upgrading to Mountain Lion. Would that solve the issue also?

On reflection, the Snow Leopard and Lion partitions are being Time Machined but the ML isn't so I can't say, and in any case, Spotlight would be turned off so I couldn't tell. But ML is a big jump with lots of features if you need them but if it was me, I wouldn't make the move just to fix the TM/Spotlight problem. I'd just turn off Spotlight and use something else for searching. Indeed, I have Automatic Backups turned off in TM; I know when I've made a change that needs backing up and then I run it manually. The whole point is to not have the Mac busy doing indexing or backing up or both when I'm trying to do something else. E.g., running a nested Virtual Machine is tough when the HD wants to index, too.

I can absolutely confirm that it is a Spotlight related issue. After upgrade to 10.7.5 TM was immensely slower, 24 hrs to backup 276GB (after a few hangs and stalls).

After disabling Spotlight it returned to normal, 3 hrs to BU 276 GB. Here is a link which I followed to fix the problem: http://osxdaily.com/2011/12/10/disable-or-enable-spotlight-in-mac-os-x-lion/

There is no question some sort of relationship b/w Spotlight and Time Machine as I experienced a similar problem a while back with slow backups and Spotlight was the culprit then also.