Time Machine extremely slow on Mavericks ?

We are on page 17 of this specific forum discussion, with many, many users involved. Not one word from Apple. Even a "we're working on it", would be an *enormous* step forward -- so far, Apple has been completely silent about this, as though they are not even reading these forums. Several users have successfully contacted Apple, and note that Apple does not even acknowedge the problem. I find that hard to believe, Apple is too good a company, but why the extremely long silence? This is clearly a problem, and even if it's not an Apple problem, Apple really needs to at least acknowledge that this problem exists.

Apple: if you are reading this -- PLEASE respond in some way, any way. We really need a solution -- it does not matter if it's your fault, my fault, everybody's fault, nobody's fault -- whoever fixes it will have the gratitude of all!

I also have this problem, although I've only just noticed it after upgrading my Time Capsule's firmware yesterday. It takes an incredibly long time to 'Prepare Backup' and the write speeds are slow. It took about 30 minutes to transfer about 3gb of data, a task that used to take just a couple of minutes.

I have a second external WD harddrive plugged into my Time Machine that I use for media. I use Plex on my TV to stream that media, and occasionally it pops up saying 'File Not Found'. Upon exploring the external harddrive plugged into the Time Machine on my MBP, the folder 'Movies' shows for a split second then vanishes. I have to unplug the drive and plug it back in to see it again, then it happens again a few hours later. Not sure if it's related, but definitely only been happening since upgrading the Time Machines firmware to the latest version yesterday afternoon!

Hello g_man_1,

Thank you for your feedback! Sorry to know that the problem is not completely solved. Can you please monitor this for a few more days with Idle scan turned on and let me know the result?

Hello alaz0,

Thank you for the details! Can you try uninstalling the Norton product and see if the problem persists? I'll help you to reinstall it. This way, we can narrow down the possible causes and find out the root cause.

Thank you both for your support and help!

Vineeth

Norton Support

Vineeth,

OK, will do. I'll uninstall it and see what happens. I have the original Norton dmg file from which I installed my current version. I presume it will work, but if not, I'll look for you here. Or I can send you my e-mail address here, or you can give me yours. Any of those are fine.

Thanks! - Andy

Vineeth,

I don't think that removing Norton from my system will help. When I turn off Idle Scan, my iMac and Time Machine are working fine. When I turn on Idle Scan, then once the scan begins, everything slows down. Consequently, removing Norton won't make much of a difference.

Please let me know if you want me to do so anyway.

Thanks! - Andy

Time Machine is now running for almost two days. 30GB of 560GB have been backuped. Does it really need two weeks to do a full backup of my mac? I can't believe this.

I am a long time Mac and iPhone user but I never suffered such an amount of problems since Mavericks and iOS 7. Bad job Apple, really!

Mail also does not work anymore since update to Mavericks and I do not have a gmail account but an iCloud account configured with it. And all my iPads are suffering from very slow user interface and an alomost incredible delay when the keyboard is used. But this is another topic ...

I did have idle scan turned on with the latest release. As mentioned previously, Time Machine behaved normally after applying the update but Time Machine performance returned to exhibiting its slow pace after a computer reboot. Given that another user reported this Time Machine issue without running Norton, the issue may actually be with Apple and Norton may be working around it or may be making it more likely to happen.

Lucky you. I've been backing up for six days and am only up to 13.11 GB. I can hear the external drive working in irregular pulses, but that doesn't seem to corelate with data being backed up.

Hello Andy,

Thank you for the details! As you said, let us don't try uninstalling the Norton product at the moment. I will report the details to the concerned team and see whether they need more information.

Thank you for your patience!

Vineeth

Norton Support

Thanks g_man_1.

I am checking this with the team. I will let you know if I need any other details!

Vineeth

Norton Support

That's right. My hard drive would be running continuously, nothing would show up in Activity Monitor, and very little data was being transferred as seen by Activity monitor. My worst with Time Machine for a new full backup was a 70 day estimate.... The disk activity has to be either Spotlight or an idle scan from somewhere (Norton may be only one of the reasons). If you haven't tried these, see if they help: 1. System Preferences -> Spotlight -> Privacy, and turn off Spotlight to all your external drives. 2. Turn off Time Machine. Then select your Time Machine disk -- but use the pull down menu to choose your disk drive as though it's a new choice. Do not pick the icon that was the one that you just used before.

You've probably tried those already.... The Mavericks and IOS 7 releases have both been troublesome. I have seen no updates to Mavericks fro some time; I'm hoping that Apple is working on a bunch of fixes....

I have been interacting on Apple's community forums for several years and I have never seen anyone from Apple officially respond to any posting on its community forums. If you want a response from Apple, your best course of action is to open a tech support request with Apple.

I have been working on the same problem slow Time Machine backup so here is what is going on with me, I do not have Norton I am running Parallels and did have Norton on that side I have unstalled the Norton on that side. When this all started from the Mavericks down load my 1T Western drive made from a WD drive installed into a case assem. was used just for Time machine and had been working great for at least 1 year I did not have TM running all the time I turned on and off as I wanted, but when Maverick came I backed up before and then started to back after, I did this late in the day and I noticed the next day I had only backed 26gb out of 390gb I then started reading Discussions and doing all the thing people were talking about, clear up to re formatting this WD drive I have tested many times and it is slow always would take many days to finish I keep stoppind and reformatting I do not have any WD firmware. I also have a 1T iomega that I use to store my iphotos and imovies both drives are USB, the iomega had only 300gb used and before I formatted the WD i thought what would happen if I used the iomega with Time Machine Pow 4hrs backup done, have used many times after just a few minutes and done, when I check it has all the right daily stuff. WOW I don't now about the WD what is wrong. More I have been using a SanDisk 2gb flash drive for many years to back up one folder with financial , this is about 400mg backups about 2minutes normal for all these years, when I went to use 4 hrs in mavericks , I have another 2gb SanDisk that I just use for things never used for financial I tried this one POW 2 minutes. So it seem to me backups that are on a products and had been used in lion wont work in Mavericks. I have sent this in feed back to Apple

I have literally been backing up over 800g for more than 2 weeks. I have tried everything I could think of to speed up the process, from shutting off Norton, and thinking if the wi-fi on my computer was shut off, it would speed this up. Not realizing that when you turn off the wi-fi, it stops the backup - which makes no sense as I have the time capsule set up as a backup drive only and not a network hub. At least the time capsule is picking up where it left off. For me to even get the backup to start, I also had to do like many here, reformat the time capsule as the processing portion was taking hours and hours instead of a couple minutes. I have about 100g left to backup, so hopefully after Thanksgiving it will be done. I was in an Apple store last night looking at Ipad Mini's and asked someone there about the issue, they told me they thought there was a firmware update addressing this. I got home and Apples website does mention a firmware update from Nov. 21, but does NOT address this issue but something else entirely. Maybe it is taking so long for them to respond as maybe they don't have any idea why this issue exists, BUT they should at least not keep this many people in the dark about a serious bug in the software. This is the last time I will jump the bandwagon and download a new OS the day of release. IOS7 has had like 4 or 5 updates since it's release just a month or so ago, that is WAY more than IOS6 has had in an entire year. What is happening with our Apple?

We had problems with very slow backups at my work. We have a AFP share on a Linux server and it has been working fine until Mavericks was released. Then it stopped working for some and got extremely slow for some others.

The problem seems to have something to do with TCP timestamps ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP_tuning ).

If we disable timestamps on the server it works fine. If we disable RFC1323 on any Mavericks Mac it also works.

To disable it on your Mac, open Terminal and write:

sudo sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.rfc1323=0

That will disable it until next reboot.

To make it stick after next reboot, write:

sudo sh -c 'echo "net.inet.tcp.rfc1323=0" >> /etc/sysctl.conf'

I hope this will work for you guys too.