I set up time machine and let it start backing up for the first time....I was up for about an hour whilst it was backing up and it did about 400mb. I then went to bed and woke up and it had done 5gb. 5gb in about 8 hours. It was ridiculous. I am backing up about 50 gb at the moment. I am yet to have a full back-up because it takes way too long. I end up canceling it. Is there something i am doing wrong?? I am so confused as to why it is taking so long.
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time machine is sooo slow!!!!
- Thread starter nlivo
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I dont think it is Time Machine. I was actually surprised yesturday at how fast it is. I used to use BackUp and when i would do a fresh back up of my main HD it would be close to 20 hours as it is 200GBs plus. Reason being the files it had to create. Yesturday I finally went and did my first full backup with Time Machine and it made its file structure of 211 GBs in about 3 ish hours and that is to a 500WD Mybook over firewire.
So I am quite impressed at how fast it did it. I would check out some other reaons why yours may have gone slow.
Kevin
i experienced the same problem, when I first tried to do the backup using time machine thru a Firewire 800 to a LaCie. Over 2 hours, it only backed up 3GB, and I wanted to back up about 120GB. All I had to do was turned off the anti-virus software, and the speed more than double. Hope that help.
i am 90% sure i know what the problem is now. The hard drive formatted to "MS-DOS (FAT)". I am guessing it has to be "Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)" except when i try to change it, it says it will take about 8 hours. Anyway of fastening up the process?? If not, I'll wait 'til tonight to start the process and leave it overnight.
i changed it to mac os x extended (Journaled) and it hasn't changed. It is still really slow. Anyone got any ideas. It's connected through USB, if that matters. Please help.
How is it physically connected (i.e. hubs, etc) - it sounds to me as if you're getting USB1.1 speeds rather than USB2
try testing the speed of transfer without time machine. try the following (i'm doing this from memory so bear with me)
- open terminal
- run without the quotes, "tar cf - . | ( cd /<your volume name> ; tar xpf - )"
to get the stats,
- open a new terminal
- try running "iostat"
see the average read/write. it is essentially the same as you would get with time machine
- open terminal
- run without the quotes, "tar cf - . | ( cd /<your volume name> ; tar xpf - )"
to get the stats,
- open a new terminal
- try running "iostat"
see the average read/write. it is essentially the same as you would get with time machine
i just backed up 407,470 total files last night using SuperDuper, as i will be installing Leopard tonight.
SD says you must turn off any anti-virus software and should login to your account with your start off items 'off' and also extensions off, by holding down the 'Shift' button as you click 'log in.' or Go, or whatever the button is (at work, on a pc). so log out, then log back in that way.
it took about 2 hours to back all those files up via firewire. i just caught up on a couple dvr-ed 'Monster Quests' and was good to go.
Sedge
SD says you must turn off any anti-virus software and should login to your account with your start off items 'off' and also extensions off, by holding down the 'Shift' button as you click 'log in.' or Go, or whatever the button is (at work, on a pc). so log out, then log back in that way.
it took about 2 hours to back all those files up via firewire. i just caught up on a couple dvr-ed 'Monster Quests' and was good to go.
Sedge
i did that and this is what i got...
i also tried changing cords and that didn't help. It is obviously the external HD. I tried using time machine with another of my external HD's and it was fine but I cannot continue to use that HD for time machine. The external HD was fine before leopard. Please help! Thanks.
I just tried to "Repair Disk" in Disk Utility and it is said "This disk could not be unmounted". I also tried to "Erase" it using "Zero Out Data" and it said "Could not unmount disk". I am getting a little worried the Hard Drive is stuffed. Any other suggestions? Please. Thanks.
has the "tar" completed already? btw, the iostat should be "iostat 5", to show samples every 5 secs.
well i let it be and it looks like it will take forever and when i come back to the computer and it is done. It seems like it is way too quick for it to be finished. I did the iostat 5 thingy...this is what i got.
got it working. I just plugged it into my intel mac mini (a different computer) and re-did the whole thing in disk utility and it is now working. time machine is AWESOME!!!! thanks for your help guys.