Time Machine extremely slow on Mavericks ?

For anyone using the Seagate Backup Plus USB 3 external drive and seeing slowness in the Time Machine backup, I discovered the following:

1. The drive comes with some software called "Seagate Dashboard" which lets you configure some settings on the drive.
2. After installing this software and opening it, it requested that I upgrade it to v3 so I did so and rebooted the machine.
3. I also went ahead and upgraded the drive's firmware to version "SH04"
4. Reboot again
5. Now my machine has booted up and the Seagate Dashboard runs itself by default so its sitting up in my menu bar to the left of the date/time (its a teal icon)
6. Now also up in the menu bar, I go ahead and click the Time Machine icon and do "Backup Now"
7. The backup starts running, but its backing up horribly slow, something like .1 MB/sec
8. Now I open Activity Monitor just to see if something else is going on and discover that the Seagate Dashboard program is cranking on the CPU (between 25% and 50% CPU activity)
9. I then go back to the menu bar and click the teal Seagate Dashboard icon, uncheck the "Open at sign in" so it stops starting itself up when I reboot/login/out and also exit the Seagate Dashboard app completely
10. After exiting, now the Time Machine backup that was running @ .1 is FLYING at like 20-30 MB/sec

I'm not sure why but it looks like the Seagate Dashboard possibly in conjunction with the firmware version SH04 is interfering with Apple's Time Machine write performance on the drive.

Chris

Did the trick! Thanks a lot for the tip.

Do no if it can help but I had exactly the same issue.

Time Machine is connected to a an external HD from Western Digital (My PassPort 1 To, 2,5 inch). On this HD, I have done 2 partition. One 850 Go for time machine formatted with the Apple format (Mac OS extended) and the other 150 Go in ExFAT used as a huge USB Key.

All was perfect with the previous OS and becomes a nightmare with Maverick. The solution which is not perfect but allow to run Time Machine is to eject the partition in ExFAT to have only the partition needed for Time Machine connected. Once it's done, the flow becomes normal quite fast and never blocked.

Hope it can help! Apple should move ahead to solve this so annoying issue. We are paying a fortune our devices, it's to avoid to face those bloody issues copy/paste from the PC wold.

Ron

Sign me up, too. A fresh installation of Mavericks (long story) and my first backup on a freshly erased Toshiba HD, formatted Mac Journaled with GUID interface. Been going for hours and it shows 146.6 mb of 400 gigs backed up. I don't have anywhere near 400 gigs of data, so there's THAT, but even if I have only 200 gigs, isn't it going to be thousands of hours at this speed?

OK, checking just how slow this is, it's taking about 10 seconds to back up one-TENTH of a MEGAbyte.

Serious problem ...

What is the connection between the Toshiba HD and the Mac?

USB.

1. The first backup typically estimates 1.5 times used disk space.

2. If the source has a large number of very small files, it can be slow.

All this is moot, because it gave me an error about "disconnecting" the drive, even though it has not at all been disconnected.

Oops! Despite error message, it still seems to be backing-up. Now at having backed-up 170.2 megabytes of 399.79 gigabytes.

That said, 10 seconds per 1/10 of a MEGAbyte is slower than dialup.

What type of enclosure do you have for the Toshiba?

Have you used it before as a backup destination? If yes, was the speed the same as it is now?

I have not used the Toshiba before. I bought it because it was such a good deal, but the guy who tried to downgrade from Mavericks (not at all successful) and then re-installed it after the downgrade failed did a Time Machine backup onto an Armor SP. After I managed to retrieve my mail, contacts, bookmarks, music, photos, etc. from a the pre-downgrade Time Machine backup on a WD MyPassport (not by restoring but by copying files within backups), the Armor "prepared for backup" forever. So then I formatted the Toshiba Mac journaled with GUID and tried to use it for Time Machine.

At least it finished "prepare for backup," so I'm grateful for that.

As you can probably tell, I'm not a sophisticated user at ALL, but I will say that he told me that that the original downgrade failed, in part, because the WD MyPassport put some kind of encryption on the files, and he told me that carried onto the files themselves on the backup drive.

So could that be part of the problem?

Sorry, about not completely answering your question. I don't understand what you mean by "enclosure." It's a little pocket HD.

Just wanted to make sure this not a bare HDD that you put into a disk enclosure for backup purposes, because sometimes the "chipsets" used in such enclosures can be sub-par for performance.

If you look at About This Mac -> More Info -> System Report -> USB, does this show up as a USB3 (5 Gbps) or USB2 (480Mbps) connection? USB Superspeed is USB3, USB High-speed is USB2.

Are you using any encryption for your backup drive?

USB 2.

1. Do you have another Time Machine destination configured for this Mac? If yes, does it also use USB and does that exhibit the same behavior if used.

2. This is a risky suggestion causing you to lose time, but if you are willing then cancel the backup (this may take a long time). Remove some large folders that you are aware of like Documents which change a lot from your TM backup. Test a backup of say just Applications.

My last response is not showing up for some reason.

I recently had a friend try to help me downgrade from Mavericks (for various reasons). I had a Time Machine backup on a WD MyPassport, but I didn't know what I had and he didn't look into it in detail. Seems the WD had encrypted the files and for other reasons concerning, I think, that my original Mac has me as just one of several users and I'd just been backing up me as a user, the OS files were not backed up and trying to restore from that Time Machine essentially blew out the OS (as I understand his explanations). For some reason, probably my mistake, it has also been formated as case sensitive.

He could not downgrade the computer but after much work, he did manage to install Mavericks anew. He backed up his installation on an Armor drive.

Although he said he had saved my "Backup Data" I did not have much of it, including bookmarks, contacts, etc. So I copied those (did not restore them) from the WD Drive. Then I tried using the Armor to do a Time Machine backup. It never got out of the "preparing for backup" stage.

I had a third hard drive, the Toshiba, on hand, so I erased/formatted it as Mac journaled, with one GUID partition, and started up this iteration of a Time Machine Backup. Preparing went OK, but the backing up has been unbelievably slow. As I watch it just now, it takes about 5 seconds to back up one tenth of a megabyte.

So, at this point, I think I'm stuck doing an "initial" backup. The WD Passport has some kind of funny formatting and encryption, and the Armor can't get out of preparing. Although, all things considered, why NOT us the WD to make a backup of it now? The only reason I hesitate is that he said something like the security/encryption is applied to and follows the files after they get back to Mac.

I'm certainly willing to stop the backup and see what's on the Armor and maybe erase it and start over with it with just the Applications folder.