Time machine backups very, very slow

If this issue was as a result of a update, then Apple should be resolving it with another update, to ensure all affected people are captured. "I was not aware there was a general issue until I viewed this forum, now I'm unhappy with the lack of attention given to the issue by Apple.

"Maybe the best way to highlight the issue to other Apple users is not via this forum, but via some of the social networking services

In case it helps, this fixed it for me: http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/219884/161944

msravi wrote:

In case it helps, this fixed it for me: http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/219884/161944

Thank you! http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/219884/161944 totally helped me, it now took 15 mins instead of 4 hours to backup 500MB. However, I got an error with tmutil setdestination, "Incompatible file system type: smbfs (error 45)", to fix it, I have to do one more thing from this article http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/time-machine-and-networked-folder-drive.1425 355/.

"The step I missed was opening up the share in finder, and double clicking the parse bundle so that it would mount the parsebundle as a device. Once I did that I was able to run sudo tmutil setdestination /Volumes/Time Machine Backup (note: this is not the name of the share on my Windows 7 machine, it is the name of the device that was attached after opening the parse bundle in the shared folder). Hope this helps."

I tried the above advice for Time Machine with no success, however the advice on Virus Scan worked for me, I am using Karspersky and putting my WD MyCloud into the Trusted zone worked, now backups work as designed,

Many thanks for the advice

I think I found the problem. For me it was Spotlight. When I disabled it (http://osxdaily.com/2007/03/22/how-to-completely-disable-spotlight/) and killed all mds (and related) processes in Activity Monitor Time Machine works as earlier (super fast). It's not a definite solution and should be resolved by Apple in future Mac OS update, but it works for now.

Even easier - launch Terminal and run:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

and when backup is complete run:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

I installed a new disc (internal) for Time Machine back up and at first it ran ok, but then crawled to ≈1 MB/minute. Several restarts, safe boots and online search didn't help. But I had two user accounts that are never used so I tried to exclude them from the back up and the speed went up again.

After logging in to the two accounts for the first time since the El Capitan installation and removing them from the exclude list everything seems to run at full speed again.

I spent a lot of time around this. The best practices I found are:

1 - Erase your backup media and start anew - always best. Dedicate one drive or partition exclusively to TM.

2 - If you want encrypted backups and are using an external drive, erase/format that drive with encryption to start with. If not, (Time Capsule case) the first backup will be far slower as it includes encryption of the drive/partition.

3 - Yes, a first backup will take a while (400GB took about 24h). Part of the time has to do with Spotlight indexing, and Spotlight should not be excluded as it is part of the TM backup process.

4 - If you are using TM to backup a laptop, it is best to connect it to the backup media via hardwire, not WiFiI, and plan enough time for the job.

Following the above, all is well and subsequent backups are fast.

Hi, I've read through the 4 pages of posts.

I have a MBP connected to a Synology and seem to have the same problem since El Capitan

Have tried several things (fresh backup: took 4 days last time for 400 GB; disable realtime protection on antivirus;...) to no avail.

Now, I'm not an IT professional, have fooled here and there in command, but that's about it.

I tend to believe Linc Davis and R C-R,

, they do seem to know what they're talking about. But my question is: how should the common consumer be aware of these problems before choosing their backup device, especially when Apple doesn't seem too concerned about the informing the details of your NAS requirements.

OK they published the specification as mentioned by Linc Davis, thanks for the link but....Dear Apple, did you even see the title of that page? "Mac Developer Library"?

The first sentence reads:

"Not all AFP servers support the functionality required for Time Machine backups"

Are you serious? I'm sure just a handfull of people know of the existence of this page, and definetely not the consumer who goes with Apple for the convenience and ease of use.

Oh, and then i googled and found this page:

Backup disks you can use with Time Machine - Apple Support

Where I read this:

Backup disks you can use with Time Machine

You can use Time Machine with a drive connected to your Mac, a drive built into or connected to a Time Capsule, or a supported network volume.

Time Machine can back up the data on your Mac to these backup disks:

• An external USB, Thunderbolt, or FireWire drive connected to your Mac
• An AirPort Time Capsule's built-in drive (any model)
• An external USB drive connected to an AirPort Time Capsule (any model) or AirPort Extreme (802.11ac model only)
• Network volumes connected using Apple File Protocol (AFP)

Did you see the last point?

I don't read "Network volumes connected using Apple File Protocol (AFP), but be sure to read our well documented Mac Developer Library where we detail that, in fact, as far as we know, no one sells compliant devices."

No I just read "Network volumes connected devices using AFP".

So off I go, by myself a shiny new Macbook Pro and am very happy with it since I have it, except I'm stuck for the convenience of, in my case, a useless Time Machine (which by the way was an incentive to go Apple for the easy backups)

Am I totally wrong?

Should I ask Apple for a refund?

Oh by the way, we had an Apple Care with support. We have talked to them about, among other things, backing up to a NAS (before the issues started). No one on the other end of the line has EVER warned us that we were in a "at your own risk"-situation.

For Synology users: Our backups have always worked fine till El Capitan. Trying to sort it out now, I've been digging around and saw this page, which somehow I had never come across before.

https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/Backup_Restore/How _to_back_up_files_from_Mac_to_Synology_NAS_with_Time_Machine

Scroll down to past halfway down the page (1.3) where you can read and see this:

Check the box Enable Mac file service, and choose the shared folder you just created from the Time Machine drop-down menu.

I've done this and, tadaaaa:

1GB backed-up in 10 min.

Seems to work fine now!

Hope this helps anyone struggling...

Hi,

I hope this might be useful to some.

In my case, I just have a plain old WD external HD. It always worked fine until recently.

I read a lot of things on this subject, and several people had success by deleting .fseventsd and .Spotlight-V100 in the root of their backup drive, then restarting Time Machine.

That worked for me. Then, something clicked.

I'm not sure whether .fseventsd is relevant, but .Spotlight-V100 is generated by, well, Spotlight doing its thing.

Apple's article mentions that anti-virus software can really slow things down as it's checking out each file that gets backed up.

Likewise, Spotlight is indexing as the backup is being made. It looks like there's only one file in the backup, but it's actually a package containing about a zillion files. Many of them are eligible to be indexed.

So, it would seems reasonable that Spotlight might have been slowing things down. I did notice my whole computer was inexplicably slow as well.

To exclude the backup drive from Spotlight, it's just System Preferences > Spotlight > "Privacy" tab > "+" button > select backup drive > "Choose".

Apologies if someone covered this since I last read this thread.

PS- I also reformatted the drive as HFS+ case-sensitive, journaled/GUID and made sure the files above were deleted and Spotlight was excluded before beginning the backup. Currently humming along at about 1GB in 15 seconds on USB 3.

But... isn't Spotlight needed to check files in the backup later? I tested it anyway (re speed) and found no difference. Spotlight stays.

I have gone through phases of my WD NAS being incredibly slow. It feels like a cumulative problem that only becomes intolerable when a very large backup is required - such as an OS upgrade.

I solve it by turning off all the media serving capability on my NAS - just make it do backups.

Then I setup a proper user rather than Guest, just in case there is some benefit - I don't know.

I think the main problem is a steady build up of problems on the drive. I have just reformatted the NAS (restore to factory default the long way).

I use a lot of cloud drive space for anything that matters so that is not as dangerous as it sounds. It has gone from 72 hours to do 250MB to 720GB in less than 48 hours.

However, I am coming round to Linc Davis' view - above. I'll get a Time Capsule when I can afford it.

I've tried removing the old backup and creating a new one. I've tried stopping spotlight and rebuilding the index.

I've tried the SMB trick below.

El Capitan backups are SLOW (never complete - for weeks) over the network. I've got a current Airport Extreme, I've pulled the drive and directly attached it to my machine to run disk first aid, Even with the disk having zero errors, nothing makes it work.

The same behavior with a year old macbook pro (wifi) and a three year old iMac (direct ethernet connection)

Both machines can complete a backup if a disk is directly attached - the behavior is specific to el capitan, and to over the network backups. I'm getting pretty frustrated, and I'm about to move to a local drive for each machine. Ick!

Hello Everyone,

Well, since El Capitan upgrade I had huge issues with Time Machine (extremly slow, to the point it was a useless backup system).

I digged all I could to find a solution, and tried almost all I could :

- Formatted backups then restart from scratch

- Destroyed then rebuild all spotlight indexes

- Edited some kernel settings (net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack, debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled, ...)

- Tested backups on another Time Capsule

- Tested in WiFi and cable

- Resetted PRAM and SMC

- And so on ...

None of these changed anything ...

But today I found the solution (at least for me), so I'm sharing it with you (found it randomly to be honest) as I'm pretty sure it might work for some of you guys.

So my issue was due to MenuMeter. Since El Capitan upgrade, I've installed MenuMeter 1.9.1.

This version, when disc monitoring is ON makes hard drives performances to crumble.

So I've disabled it (in fact I completely removed MenuMeter, which is a shame 'cause I love this tool ...) and everything came back normal.

My backups are now all good, as they used to be 🙂

The source : https://github.com/yujitach/MenuMeters/issues/19

Hope this helps some of you (I'm sure many of you are using MenuMeter) !

Best Regards,

LittleBigFox

I've been fighting with backup over wifi since El Capitan on a couple of machines. This is *definitely* at least a part of the problem I'm having. After removing menumeters from system preferences, backup is running a LOT faster on my macbook pro.

I'm doing a backup now, but I'm almost certain that there's a problem with the backups making too many copies of files. I think it's essentially running a full backup every time instead of incrementals. We'll see what happens when the current backup actually completes. THANK YOU for sharing this info. I'm VERY sad that menumeters has to go.