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Time Machine extremely slow on Mavericks ?

Hi all !

I've installed Mavericks this morning on my Retina MacBook Pro.

Time machine seem to be SLoooooowwww !

When I clic "start backup", it takes forever to "prepare the backup" and then I when it finally starts to send the data over ethernet (via a thunderbolt adapter), it just doesn't get there. After half an hour, I got something like a few Mb transferered.

Anyone's got the same issue ?


Best regards,

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Oct 23, 2013 10:13 AM

Reply
386 replies

Oct 23, 2013 12:13 PM in response to Philippe Mingasson

I'm having the same issue... whether I connect my external drive via USB or Thunderbolt, the backup takes forever to "prepare the backup", backs up only a few MBs at a time, and is constantly pausing to "calculate the time remaining".


What used to take minutes to backup is now taking over 12 hours regardless of the connection. It is practically unusable.

Oct 23, 2013 2:15 PM in response to Philippe Mingasson

Similar experience here. External Time Capsule backup is EXTREMELY slow after upgrade to Mavericks (from 10.7.5). No apparent difference whether WiFi or Ethernet directly into the Time Capsule. "Calculating time remaining..." message stays on indefinitely, with very slow transfer. Also noticed new behavior where the "Time Machine Backups" volume no longer mounts or shows in Finder. I'm hoping these are transient issues that are related to a first-time backup with the new OS. We'll see. (MBP, late 2011, non-Retina, 16GB RAM).

Oct 24, 2013 1:29 AM in response to Philippe Mingasson

Another VERY strange thing. The backup ended up finishing. So OK, it was slow but it worked.

Next thing : a fw hours later, with no modifications whatsoever on the system, it initiate another backup just to see. And it tells me there are 70Gb of data to be backed up.

I'll wait for it to finish and will give it anoter go to see what happens.

Oct 24, 2013 2:38 AM in response to Philippe Mingasson

Same problem here on Mavericks.


Backup had copied 7KB in 30 minutes.


Yes, 7 kilobytes... of 90 gigabytes. I haven't worked it out, but I'd say we're looking at around nine months for the backup to complete at that speed.


Tried two different WiFi APs and also tried wired LAN via USB, same on all three. Was fine on Mountain Lion.


Not sure what to do now??

Oct 24, 2013 2:57 AM in response to Philippe Mingasson

That's to be expected on a whole new OS with a time machine update after install


Others here wouldnt recommend it, but on a new OS install, since I have a giant pile of HD, ...i just grab another HD and create a new fresh Time Machine backup


after its complete, I take the original HD with the OLD backup and format/erase it.



Im a tad too lazy to wait, as you yourself mentioned, 1 hour for TM just to PREPARE to backup. Nope, no,...not gonna do it.



I updated 4 Macs to Mavericks and id rather make a wholly NEW Time Machine backup on another HD and erase the original.


Since I keep about 12+ redundant archives of my important data, I have no worry on earth of ever losing data.

Time Machine extremely slow on Mavericks ?

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