Time Machine extremely slow on Mavericks ?

If you have spare HD laying around, make a fresh time machine backup, ....goes fast, problem solved

And yes after installing mavericks on 4 diff Macs I know about the "only backed up 7kb in 30 mins." 'Situation'

Different HD and new complete time machine backup eliminated the long wait

Installed Mavericks yesterday late on my 27"iMac/12GB RAM/Mavericks/ComcastConnection. The icon for my Backup drive did not change to the Time Machine icon as it was in Mountain Lion. Decided to simply wipe the backup drive, reformat, and start Mavericks w a new backup this morning. I am backing up appx. 300GB data. Backup drive is connected via firewire. My backup is going verrrryyyy slowwwwlllyyy as well. Looks like about .03 GB per sec or it will take 2.75 hours to back up 300 GB. Doesn't normally take that long to copy GB's of data. Maybe I forget.

OK, so maybe I just needed to be a little more patient. As others have reported, the first backup after the Mavericks install or upgrade will be much slower than expected, since it's a new OS. And the first hour or so will be EXCRUCIATINGLY slow with very little actual data transferred, to the point where you may think it's better to abort and try something (anything) else. Just let it run. My initial backup (170GB) took about 8 hours over WiFi, but sped up transfer rates significantly towards the end. Subsequent backups are running as quickly as they seemed to with ML. Next time I'll remember to kick off the initial backup, have another cold Martini, and go do something else. HTH. 🙂

3 hours into the initial backup and only 150GB of 300GB has been copied by Mavericks Time Machine. Guess my earlier estimate is incorrect.

For the first time ever Time Machine is actually working well for me after Mavericks upgrade. I'm using a WD Mybook live that was always slow under Mountain Lion. For 3 days now, it works as I would expect under Mavericks.

Backup finished after 4.5 hours for 300GB.

BobElliot wrote:

For the first time ever Time Machine is actually working well for me after Mavericks upgrade. I'm using a WD Mybook live that was always slow under Mountain Lion. For 3 days now, it works as I would expect under Mavericks.

Same here. Even wireless backup is faster. However I did delete my previous backups and created a new Mavericks backup on MBL.

I have the same problem here.

Trying to restore to Mavericks from a Time Machine backup made with Mountain Lion.

Did a clean install of Mavericks yesterday but it takes literally 15 minutes for Time Machine to read the contents of my USB3 backup drive. The actual restores take place at full speed once they're going but for a while I was concerned that my backup drive was dead.

I will likely erase this backup volume and start again, once I've managed to restore it of course..

I did a new TM backup on a different drive from the ML backup so I had about 330gb to backup. My experience was that it was very slow initially. After about 3 hours I was only a few % done. After 5 hours it was about 10% done. 8 hours showed about 30% done. 12 hours was about 65% done. When I got up this morning it showed the first backup was finished at over 16 hours of running. All subsequent backups have beed running quickly. So it looks like that first backup is going to be slow even if you just append it to your former backup. It is still going to be a rather large backup.

I should add that my backup drives are connected via FW800 so if I had been using USB2 it might have taken several days. Just let it do its thing and then see how the backups run after that.

Actually scratch my first comment. Time machine simply won't open the backup anymore. Have had to resort to manual restores from the filesystem on the drive. Just browsing it in finder.

Bit of a *******!

I'm having exactly the same problem - incrediably slow. No end in sight..

I have also exact the same issue. My Backup is verly slowly. How can i fix it?

Ok, I did some messing around last night and I think I might have found something. I left the Time Machine Preferences window open so I could see the transfer rate. For reference I am transferring to a NAS over Ethernet.

As I reported here earlier it was going very slowly (e.g. 6kb in 30mins) However when I stopped using my computer and watched - it picked up speed. I then used my computer (surfed the internet nothing heavy) it slowed down again. I have a Macbook 2011 Air but it runs respectfully fast and my Time Machine backups on Mountain Lion were fast.

Therefore I'm thinking that if you start using your machine it slows down, maybe becuase it thinks your changing files, power saving on mains??? After I left it it got back up to normal speed quite quickly and then completed the full backup in what I would call a sensible time.

Just my findings and won't help everybody...

My Backup runs over the night and in the morning it says 12h left for 70GB 8-)

I canceld the backup and i start it this evening again and let him run till the end.