Time machine slow, backs up too much?

[macstatic]

I find Time Machine to be quite slow and seems to back up lots of files even though I've just done a backup and barely created any new files since my previous backup. It also seems that it hogs the disk I/O as synchronizing other drives at the same time (using Chronosync) as Time Machine is running makes both tasks very slow. I'm on a Mac Pro 5.1 running OSX 10.6.8.

The Mac Pro has several internal drives installed, and one of those is used for Time Machine. Mind you, it's a 3TB Western Digital "green" drive, so it's not super-fast but I believe backups shouldn't take this long, and it shouldn't back up so many files when I haven't really done much work on the computer. For the latter I've excluded a lot of folders and another internal backup drive. So are there other folders I can also leave out or something else I should check?

 

[mintfan7200]

I do not use time machine its not a very good program in my opinion and it seems to just cause problems . You should try a different back up program such as carbon copy cloner . There are many different back up programs out there find what one is best for you .

 

[Weaselboy]

Most of what you added to your list there is already excluded from a TM backup by default. See this article.

If you stop running Chronosync is TM still slow? There may be a conflict between the two. When you say it is "slow", how slow are we talking about?

 

[macstatic]

By slow I just mean that it appears slow to me, taking forever to back up just a few changes.
Is there a simple way I can actually check the transfer speed while it's running? And checking transfer speeds of two apps at the same time (Time Machine and Chronosync).

 

[Weaselboy]

Remember it is not just copying files. When TM triggers a backup it has to check the system log to see what files have changed and need to be backed up, then copy those files over to the TM disk, then after that purge the TM backup set of expired backups. If there were a lot of changes (like maybe you updated the iTunes app), that can take a few minutes.

You could watch the network transfer speeds in Activity Monitor to get an idea of how fast the data is being copied.

Or open Console and and type backup in the filter at the top to show only TM activity logs. Then look through the time for the most recent backup and you will see something like the entries below I just copied from my system.

3/1/14 6:17:26.932 AM com.apple.backupd[3147]: Will copy (3.4 MB) from Macintosh HD
3/1/14 6:17:26.936 AM com.apple.backupd[3147]: Found 67 files (3.4 MB) needing backup
3/1/14 6:17:26.948 AM com.apple.backupd[3147]: 104.9 MB required (including padding), 1.95 TB available
3/1/14 6:17:26.948 AM com.apple.backupd[3147]: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
3/1/14 6:17:58.919 AM com.apple.backupd[3147]: Copied 122 items (3.4 MB) from volume Macintosh HD. Linked 1069.

You can see it backed up 67 files (3.4MB) in about 30 seconds.

 

[macstatic]

Something strange seems to be going on here judging by my console output. I did a little test by closing all my apps, then forcing TM to do a backup ("Back up now" from the menu-bar) followed 5 seconds later by a new "Back up now").
I expected at least the 2nd backup to take just a few seconds since I wasn't working on any files, but both backups actually took almost 3 minutes and they both backed up the exact same number of files (several thousand files from multiple drives actually!). Very strange.
I also looked up the following message which I got each time:

"Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:contains changes|must scan subdirs|fsevent|".

It seems that it has to do with re-indexing files because TM has lost track of them somehow, which is very strange considering I reformatted my backup drive (it's a lot quicker than deleting TM backups) and started again.

 

[Weaselboy]

Something strange seems to be going on here judging by my console output. I did a little test by closing all my apps, then forcing TM to do a backup ("Back up now" from the menu-bar) followed 5 seconds later by a new "Back up now").
I expected at least the 2nd backup to take just a few seconds since I wasn't working on any files, but both backups actually took almost 3 minutes and they both backed up the exact same number of files (several thousand files from multiple drives actually!). Very strange.
I also looked up the following message which I got each time:

"Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:contains changes|must scan subdirs|fsevent|".

It seems that it has to do with re-indexing files because TM has lost track of them somehow, which is very strange considering I reformatted my backup drive (it's a lot quicker than deleting TM backups) and started again.

It almost sounds like the index is not being updated on the external drives. How many drives do you have attached and what format are they? Does this issue go away if you disconnect the externals?

 

[macstatic]

Neither the Time Machine drive or any other drives are external as they're internal ones inside my Mac Pro.
Yes, TM seems to have problems indexing and remembering what it's done before. I even tried to reset TM but that didn't change anything either.