time machine slow initial backup - fix

[Mehuge]

My backup was running slowly.

Perhaps because Spotlight was not switched off for the USB drives when I started the backup, but switching off Spotlight did not improve the speed of the already running backup.

I then found that Finder was eating 60% CPU and was the top user of CPU, even though I wasn't using it, so I killed Finder and the backup immediately speeded up by a significant factor with backupd now being the top CPU user.

 

[tiwassie]

Time machine slow

I have use TM all the time and it is great BUT the slow initial backup is sooooo frustrating.
Here is how to fix it.
Delete the TM pref file from your library
Delete any previous TM file from the back-up disc, and empty trash
Open Spotlight and go to 'Privacy'
Add every drive you have!
Un-tick every selection box as well, don't need to, but it makes me feel better.

Now it should be fine.

I had TM running for 10 hours and it did 33GB only!!!!
With the above in place it is up to 10GB in 5 mins. That's more like it.

Don't forget to change spotlight back again later if you want to be able to search for docs, but there may not be a need for you to allow searching of the backup drive, so leave it in the 'Privacy' window.

 

[arsoncarson]

Time Machine + USB HUB ≠ FAST

My initial Time Machine back up was painfully slow. After letting it run about 12 hours only 58GB of 128GB were backed up from my iMac!

The problem was the USB 2.0 hub to which the LaCie 750GB HD was connected. I stopped the backup up, unmounted the drive, connected it directly to the iMac, and began the Time Machine backup again. I didn't erase the disk and start over, just started the TM backup.

In 10 minutes about 17GB have been backed up. I had stopped and restarted the backup before and 17GB would have taken about 45 - 60 minutes before!

WOW! I can't believe I didn't even notice this on my end. I'm sitting here on this forum for like 2 hours searching desperately for an answer as to why my TM is going SO SLOW (10GB/hour)! I had done EVERYTHING right!

Western Digital Mybook 500GB External Hard Drive
- Turned OFF my antivirus (which I'm definitely never installing an antivirus on my MAC again)
- Turned OFF Spotlight completely
- Deleted old backups
- Zeroed out the drive
- Partitioned it (GUID)
- Verified/Repaired it

And still it was SLOW (10GB/30min), not as slow as the first time but still extremely slow and unacceptable. I searched this forum more for another answer and BOOM; I notice that my external is ALSO connected via USB 2.0 HUB! So I disconnected it, replugged it back directly into my MPB and restarted the TM backup and now I'm getting around 10GB/5min.

Final & vital step
- Unplugged external from USB hub
- Directly plugged external into USB port on my MBP

Thank you to everyone for showing me how stupid I can be at times! LOL
<3 <3

 

[mjsmke]

Its worth getting a FW800 case for youe TM Drive.

 

[rJUUSO]

TC settings

I'm using TC for time machine backups. I have TC connected with ethernet. I was getting about 300 KB/s speeds when I was making first backup. Then i chanced TC setting with airport utility. I changed TC from bridge mode to "share a public ip address" mode. Now average speed is about 17 MB/s or 1 GB/min!

 

[raffinux]

Bloody Apple MRT -> Get back your TM/TC at 1GB per Minute

Hi guys,

just want to share with you how I solved the very slow Time Capsule issue.
Today I've bought a TC 2TB 4th Generation and after connecting it via CAT6 cable directly to the switch port of the TC I started my backup. I was taking for ever....

The progress was like few KB at the beginning to move to few MB later. After 40 Minutes it managed to achieve an depressing 400MB ...

Luckily I've came across this post and the first reply caught my attention. Disabling the Antivirus did the trick but wait... I don't have an AV (as many of you) or do I???

And sure I did. The bloody Apple Malware Removal Tool Scanner MRT was running since the last security update. I thought it was a bad idea to remove it but then I've read this post:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_...showing-high-cpu-usage-after-security-update/

The MRT is just there for temporary scan but sometimes decides to sit there and keep going, as it was indeed in my case.

My current backup speed, as I'm writing this post, is about 1GB/s.
Now it works as expected. Don't get tricked by the sentence: "the 1st backup will be slow but the next will be faster". Even the 1st backup can be a breeze.

Hope to help somebody else with this post.

Raff

 

[MidWestMike]

Slow Time Machine / Capsule back up

Looks like the new Lion update from Apple fixed the issue.

THANK YOU APPLE!!

 

[jamieson]

time machine initial backup slow -fix

good advice . bring up activity monitor and find out what's consuming cpu. I found and hp utility at the top of the list along with a couple other "lp" processes. I forced quit them and backupd jumped to the top of the list and backup rate jumped signficantly.

 

[bilbo--baggins]

I'm currently looking into antivirus software because we need it for PCI compliance (otherwise I'd never use it, my only experience with antivirus is when VirusBarrier X5 which came free with .mac always crashed my Mac and I removed it).

Are people saying they switch off antivirus for the large initial backup then switch it back on - does that work ok? Or are you turning it off permanently in order to get Time Machine working properly.

 

[alenico]

speed

i've read through this string and tried pretty much everything. i'm backing up 360GB onto my 1T TC. i've started and stopped a few times to check things given it's incredibly slow speed but all in all it's probably going to take 3 days. does this sound right to anyone ?

 

[birdguano]

My initial experiences with time machine were not great, glacially slow initial backup rate, left external HDD in unstable state that could not be repaired, stuck on "preparing" etc. The initial backup rate was minutes per Mb--unacceptable.

here are some steps I took, based on watching this and apple support discussion groups--this may not work for all problems being experienced.

turn off time machine

Although TM doesnt require exclusive use of an external drive and will use HDs that have other data, you are placing those data at risk:

before you turn on TM backup anything you have on your intended time machine external disk, partition ( as GUID) first, then erase (format as HFS extended, journaled) and check/repair permissions. (dont let time machine format the disk)

exclude the external disk from spotlight indexing (or turn off spotlight altogether); certainly do not commence initial backup while spotlight is performing initial index after leopard install

turn off any virus checking!!

remove TM plist file from any previous attempts and erase and trash any previous backup files

exclude any large frequently updated database files (Entourage, Parallels) from time machine.

If you have multiple drives that you dont intend including in your routine backup, make sure you exclude them in TM

avoid daisy chained FW drives for the initial backup, time machine disk should be directly connected.



that's about it, Time Machine backed up a ~90G system from a 2.4Ghz SR MBP to a LaCie 500G d2 (FW800) in about 120 minutes and has continued with hourly backups since.

good luck!

Thank you so much! Worked a treat....