Time Machine backing up very slowly (and other questions)

[bansheebeat]

Lately my Time Machine backups have been going incredibly slow. Like ~10 gb/hour slow. I read a fix that involved booting in safe mode and then rebooting and that did the trick, but only for one backup. I don't want to keep having to do that every single time I run Time Machine.

Also, how do I completely erase my TM backups so I can just start with a clean slate? I have a 1 TB Iomega external HDD which I use for TM and extra music/video storage.

I have an early 2011 MBP - OS X 10.9.5

 

[snaky69]

Lately my Time Machine backups have been going incredibly slow. Like ~10 gb/hour slow. I read a fix that involved booting in safe mode and then rebooting and that did the trick, but only for one backup. I don't want to keep having to do that every single time I run Time Machine.

Also, how do I completely erase my TM backups so I can just start with a clean slate? I have a 1 TB Iomega external HDD which I use for TM and extra music/video storage.

I have a late 2011 MBP - OS X 10.9.5

Time Machine creates a .sparsebundle file with your computer's name. Delete that and you're back to square one.

 

[bansheebeat]

Time Machine creates a .sparsebundle file with your computer's name. Delete that and you're back to square one.

Will that erase all the prior backups?? Or will I need to reformat the whole drive?

 

[bansheebeat]

Help would be greatly appreciated... I really need to backup as I'm going to be doing some work on the computer soon and will lose my data.

EDIT: I turned off spotlight on the external HDD, and deleted the "in progress" final and it seems to be working now.

 

[Weaselboy]

Will that erase all the prior backups?? Or will I need to reformat the whole drive?

There should be one file on the disk named whatever your computer name is. Like Banshee Mac or whatever. Turn off Time Machine and delete that file and all your backups old and new will be gone. Empty the trash with the drive still connected also.

 

[bansheebeat]

There should be one file on the disk named whatever your computer name is. Like Banshee Mac or whatever. Turn off Time Machine and delete that file and all your backups old and new will be gone. Empty the trash with the drive still connected also.

No such file. In that folder there is only one file : "In Progress"

I deleted all prior backups by "Entering Time Machine" and tried to start anew. It got to 90 GB and then froze up.