maverick os x, time machine won't work

At the 24 hour mark, Time Machine had 11.6 GB of 156 GB done, with "calculating remaining time". At the 33 hour mark, Time Machine now has 13.45 GB of 13.64 GB, with 5 seconds remaining. It's been at that point for over an hour. So, any ideas as to why it's so blasted slow? Why has the total backup volume changed from 156 to 14 GB? The hard disk in my iMac just keep going and going and going, doing what?

My NAS, when I was trying to use it, had a similar result. If I turned off every feature in it, made sure the firmware was current, and did a factory reset, then it worked OK -- for a while. After a while, the writes seemed to back up, and the transfer rate dropped to an average of about 14 kbits/sec (yep, modem speeds) on all 1 Gbit/sec systems and wiring. Sometimes, I was thinking that it was a matter of managing a large number of very small files -- hard disks for many years have had problems with that.

It's now been 45 hours, and it's stuck on 5 seconds remaining. Any advice would be most helpful. Thanks!

First I turned off Time Machine so that Spotlight could finish indexing my LaCie Thunderbolt 1TB external hard drive. But after 48 hours it never even started.

So I decided to keep both Time Machine and Spotlight off in order to clone my LaCie with Carbon Copy Cloner and be done with it. Within 17 hours all 750GB stored in the LaCie were safely backed up in a bootable clone.

Time Machine and Spotlight simply don't work under Maverick when it comes to indexing and backing up after a clean install. At least in my experience...

47 hours and one Time Machine backup worked. Now the next one has started, and is behaving the same way. Rebooting, unplugging, verifying all -- disks all check OK. This is still a problem. I'm concluding that Time Machine does not work with Mavericks -- and good luck in trying to go back to Mountain Lion....

I had the same issue and found the culprit. I clicked on the EHD and under backups there was a file listed "inprogress" or something like that. I deleted it and emptied the trashcan (which took like 10 minutes).

Then I turned the EHD on and Time Machine backed off just like it normally does.

I guess I must have cancelled a TM backup and the EHD didn't like that or was trying to repprocess that info

After installing Mavericks on my one year old iMac (loaded) Time Machine failed (Pegasus Promise Thunderbolt 3TB). I tried unmounting it, didn't work. Rebooted: Time Machine failed again [Time Machine couldn’t complete the backup to “Time Machine”. Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder.] was the only message. Had to reboot to get Pegusus accessible again. Tried re-intalling Maverick (old Microsoft thing... reintall the OS). Didin't do anything for Time Machine, same failure. Booted into safe mode: nothing, same probelm. Repaired permissions: no joy there either. So, now have no Time Machine backups at all. And Time Machine won't work with the Pegasus. [same error message after 30 min or so every time]. ordinary file saves work fine though.

Ideas please?

Afgter upgrading to OS X Mavericks I had the same issues with my MacBook Pro but solved it by deleting the original backup file on my Time Machine. This meant starting fresh with a new backup file but backups now run properly and as expected.

I did not have that luck. After I cleared out all the files on the 2TB WD passport, the backup was either slow or interrrupted all the time.

Not until I receive an official mail from WD, I was not aware that there might be a software problem.

"

Dear WD Registered Customer,

As a valued WD customer we want to make you aware of new reports of Western Digital and other external HDD products experiencing data loss when updating to Apple's OS X Mavericks (10.9). WD is urgently investigating these reports and the possible connection to the WD Drive Manager, WD Raid Manager and WD SmartWare software applications. Until the issue is understood and the cause identified, WD strongly urges our customers to uninstall these software applications before updating to OS X Mavericks (10.9), or delay upgrading. If you have already upgraded to Mavericks, WD recommends that you remove these applications and restart your computer.

The WD Drive Manager, WD Raid Manager, and WD SmartWare software applications are not new and have been available from WD for many years, however solely as a precaution WD has removed these applications from our website as we investigate this issue. .

Sincerely,
Western Digital"

I googled it and cleared all the running backstage WD quickview and WD smartware, and get rid of them all from library.

After that, I rebooted, now the backup works at a much more reasonable rate.

I still have 6 hours to go, update with you later.

Had the same problem during first Time Machine backup following install of Mavericks. Slow as dirt. Prefs screen indicating 'Preparing Backup' for hours. Then the first 1 KB, 2 KB, 3 KB, etc. took more hours. FINALLY, though, Time Machine sped up SOMEWHAT, a little bit, and after nearly 24 hours of off and on backing up, I have all 700 GB backed up onto a 1 TB external WD disk. My pre-Mavericks backups (starting Sept., 2013) are also still there.

But getting here took a MAXIMUM of patience and trying and re-trying, all along me thinking the computer's doing nothing. My advice? Let TM run for as much as 24 hours. Don't pull the plug or re-start prematurely.

Finally, perhaps the following has something to do with this in my case and SOME other people's case: I received the below in an e-mail today from Western Digital:

Dear WD Registered Customer,

As a valued WD customer we want to make you aware of new reports of Western Digital and other external HDD products experiencing data loss when updating to Apple's OS X Mavericks (10.9). WD is urgently investigating these reports and the possible connection to the WD Drive Manager, WD Raid Manager and WD SmartWare software applications. Until the issue is understood and the cause identified, WD strongly urges our customers to uninstall these software applications before updating to OS X Mavericks (10.9), or delay upgrading. If you have already upgraded to Mavericks, WD recommends that you remove these applications and restart your computer.

The WD Drive Manager, WD Raid Manager, and WD SmartWare software applications are not new and have been available from WD for many years, however solely as a precaution WD has removed these applications from our website as we investigate this issue. .

Sincerely,
Western Digital

When I open the Time Machine app, a black rectangle about 2/3 of the way across my screen blocks the view of the window, although the background shows. It doesn't back up automatically, but does manually, which I do twice a day. My backup drive is a WD. I received the same email from them, searched for the offending apps, but apparently I've already deleted them. Still the problem persists.

In my experience, TTime Machine and Spotlight simply don't work under Mavericks after performing a clean install.

My recommendation is to open your System Preferences, turn both Time Machine and Spotlight off and then use a third-party application such as Carbon Copy Cloner.

It took me just 17 hours to back up all 750GB stored in my LaCie 1TB Thunderbolt.

It did the same for me, just be patient...and I even got an error message saying the Backup failed, and then next thing you know, it started backing up...

The "preparing" time took literally 3 hours; but that only happened the first backup after a Maverick installation.

Everything is humming along fine now...

I too have spent the last three days trying to back up my ibook to a LaCie Rugged 500G portable external hard drive. I had no problem with this at all for at least a year under Mountain Lion, but have not been able to back up at all under Mavericks. I have repaired my iBook's hard disk. I have reformatted the LaCie external disk. I have restarted in safe mode. I have restarted in repair mode. I have about 97 gigabytes to back up. Twice it got almost to the end (about 90 gigabytes, with plenty of room on the drive) and stopped backing up at all. I am at the point of just giving up on time machine and just backing up everything by hand, as I did in the old days.