Time machine backups take way too long

They're connected via USB 2.0. But that's not the cause. We're talking 35 MB in about half an hour or more. And we're talking short, incremental backups here. With USB 2.0 I get top data rates of 45 to 50 MB/s. So a 35 MB backup should take about a second plus overhead. Also, I used to get normal-speed backups before with USB 2.0. It's something else. I tried it on my other drives with FireWire and it still happens. I don't share anything with a Windows computer, though I do occasionally VPN in to my Windows XP computer at work from home. Thanks for your efforts.

I forgot to mention I've already used pondini.org. I'll look again in case I missed something. Thanks for your efforts.

Thanks for your efforts. Here are my answers, comments, and further info:

I believe I have repaired permissions on my drive as part of my troubleshooting. And I'm sure I checked SMART status, which came up with a thumbs up, so to speak. I'm trying again. I don't see any useful messages in any logs on the console. I'm looking at "All Messages" and there is so far nothing useful. Oh, I think you must mean repair as in "Repair Disk," not "Repair Disk Permissions." I believe the "genius" at the Apple store did that or something just as good. The machine checked out fine according to them.

Checked SMART status just now: passed. Ran Quick Drive Test: also passed.

Oh, I installed "Time Machine Buddy". Occasionally, and only occasionally, I get a "deep traversal needed message" like this (I copied this from .Backup.log):

Running preflight for "Macintosh HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: BF606E9A-5FD0-3B92-8D76-33DC63E7B2B1 eventDBUUID: 30DD929D-8982-46C2-BAE6-F0BD1E73916A)

Scanning nodes needing deep traversal

Node requires deep traversal: /Users/alanfeldman/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Database/apdb reason:contains changes|must scan subdirs|fsevent|missed reservation|

Calculating size of changes

Should copy 2919 items (27.8 MB) representing 7116 blocks of size 4096. 546805181 blocks available.

Preflight complete for "Macintosh HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: BF606E9A-5FD0-3B92-8D76-33DC63E7B2B1 eventDBUUID: 30DD929D-8982-46C2-BAE6-F0BD1E73916A)

Time elapsed: 1 minute, 39.000 seconds

But the vast majority of the time I do NOT get this message. But if there's something wrong with this apdb file, what can I do to fix it?

Note that there is usually, if not always, a lot of CPU activity or I/O (disk) activity, but not a lot getting done.

Oh, wait. Even if it is this deep traversal, apparently it takes only 1m39s to run at the most! I think the problem lies elsewhere.

It's already there. In fact, simply mounting the drive puts it there. When I eject the drive, it is removed from Privacy pane. When I reconnect or remount it, it comes right back.

Yes. I mentioned that in my first post. Didn't do donkey kong (squat). But it didn't take hours to rebuild. It took minutes, I think. It seemed really fast, but I didn't take a careful measurement (write the times down). Hmmm, maybe that's another symptom. But Spotlight works, except for once when I would click "Past Week" on Finder and I got only one file as a result. Let me try it now. Hold please . . . . . . . . . . OK. I got 66 items. Seems a little low, but at least it's a lot more than one! Perhaps I should try re-indexing Spotlight again and time it carefully.

I can't believe the method you're supposed to use to re-index Spotlight. Seems like a real hack as opposed to design.

OK, thanks.

Well, what I like about Time Machine is that it knows about your apps. For example, if you want to restore some photos, you do it through iPhoto. With others I assume you'd be digging up files, trying to find where iPhoto keeps them, maybe having to insert them into a library (good luck!) and worse. And restoring some lost emails? Sounds scary, at least at first thought! The few times I tried to restore a particular file it wasn't always all that easy finding the lost file. And clicking the broad arrows doesn't always seem to do what it's supposed to do. But I have restored the entire system disk twice now without any problems. Another thing I don't like is how often it runs, esp. with the problem I'm having! Once an hour? That's a bit much. And it should keep weekly backups forever. At some point you should go to monthly, and perhaps later even yearly. I don't think it would be that big a deal to make it customizable. If you don't want to scare people, just hide in under an Advanced tab or button or the like, and you would still have the easiest setup, namely, attaching the drive and doing a single mouse click.

It does have that really cool screen, but that's of little consolation if you can't find your missing files, of course.

What in particular don't you like about TM?

Make that "It should NOT keep weekly backups forever."

OK, I timed a Spotlight re-indexing operation. 24 min. Seems to be fine. (approx. 270,000 folders and approx. 1.1 million files on a 500 GB disk.

Started a backup at 9:52 EDT. It's still going now at 10:00 EDT (UTC-0400). It's been in the . . . oh, just made it to 41.5 MB of 42.5 MB. Before that it behaved as usual: A long time calculating changes with high CPU usage, a shorter time preparing items, then the 30 KB (+/- a few) our of 40 something MB for a long time with lots of up and down writing to disk and at time very high CPU. Now it's 43.4 MB of 43.4 MB. What the donkey kong is it doing? Had some significant disk activity, now no disk activity, but high CPU usage.

Maybe it's time to bite the bullet and upgrade. But I hate not being able to downgrade in case of a problem, though I'm been told both it can be done to it can't be done to it can be done, but only with some difficulty. (I recall the horror of not being able to down grade iOS on my iPod a while back to fix the video scrubbing problem. Very upsetting.)

Or maybe my a new iMac. Then I could tryout Final Cut!

Still at 43.4 MB of 43.4 MB at 10:18 EDT. Maybe an OS upgrade caused this, but I don't recall doing one recently enough. Is there an upgrade history kept on the machine?

Now it's doing a 2nd pass (round, backup, whatever you want to call it) at 10:18 EDT.

Ugh.