Time Machine taking over a week

[PeterQVenkman]

Just had a time machine drive go bad on an iMac (screw you, newer technology).

Got a new FW800 drive and started a new backup. It is going to take 10 days to complete.

Is there any way to speed this up? I tested the drive and the wires - I can copy normal files over wicked fast via the finder. 10 days to back this up? Ridiculous.

It's copied 7 GB over in about 4 hours.

What am I missing here? Is there some option I can turn off to speed things up?

Mac OS 10.7.5
iMac 3.4 Ghx Core i7
16 GB ram
1 TB hard drive, 1TB time machine.

 

[JRoDDz]

Cancel backup. Then verify your primary HDD and the Time Machine HDD and also repair permissions on both using Disk Utility.

 

[Weaselboy]

You might also try reindexing Spotlight by dragging Macintosh HD into the privacy pane of Spotlight then dragging it back out. Wait for the reindex to finish before turning Time Machine back on.

I have read other users on here report that fixed your issue.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Trying the permissions now, will try the re-indexing if that fails. Thanks for the ideas, guys!

 

[PeterQVenkman]

My permissions and disk verification found some issues and I fixed them.

To my horror, it turned into this.

It has spent the last 30 minutes backing up ~ 15MB of data. I'll let it run this weekend and see what happens.

 

[madsci954]

My permissions and disk verification found some issues and I fixed them.

To my horror, it turned into this.

Image


It has spent the last 30 minutes backing up ~ 15MB of data. I'll let it run this weekend and see what happens.

It may finish for your great-great-grandkids! And maybe before New Years 2200!

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Tried un-indexing my hard drive from spotlight. Re-indexing will take two days.

Holy crap, time machine is terrible. When it goes wrong it is a colossal waste of time.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

I let it go for a weekend - it is still indexing the hard drive. Sweet Jesus this is frustrating.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Updated: indexing stopped at 3 hours left, then reset and said 6 days.

I tried to fix my indexing problem with an issue seen here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/904923/

Now indexing says 8 days.


Time machine now says 121 days and climbing.


Apple's software is ********** useless. It is backing up at approx 40MB/hour over firewire 800. I'm just going to get a 3rd party solution. This is unacceptable.

 

[Mal]

Try resetting the SMC. While I never would have thought it could be even remotely related, a friend of my dad's just apparently fixed the same issue by doing that, at the suggestion of AppleCare phone support.

jW

 

[HenryAZ]

You do have the 10.7.5 Supplemental update installed? The initial 10.7.5 release (on Sept. 19th) caused just the problem you are describing, and the supplemental fixed it.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Thank you for the ideas, guys. I'm going to try both.


Edit:

You do have the 10.7.5 Supplemental update installed? The initial 10.7.5 release (on Sept. 19th) caused just the problem you are describing, and the supplemental fixed it.

This seems to have made the difference. I can actually see the items being backed up going down quickly now. Estimate puts it at 10 hours now and it's steadily working.

Thank you Henry. Hopefully someone else with my problem find this thread via google and it saves them time and headaches!

 

[HenryAZ]

Hopefully someone else with my problem find this thread via google and it saves them time and headaches!

There was a long-running thread on the Apple Support forums, during the two week period it took to get the supplemental update issued.

It was really Spotlight indexing that broke. Folks were seeing "estimates" to complete the indexing of 50GB of data ranging up to weeks or months. It sort of revealed just how intertwined Time Machine is with Spotlight, that it stopped working as well. The workaround fix from Apple during this time was to disable Spotlight indexing, so Time Machine could run. The alternate fix, for those able to do so, was to revert to 10.7.4.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Got my time machine backup done before the hurricane pecan sandy hit. It finished before I left for work on Friday, taking less than 8 hours to backup 800 GB of data.