HT201250 Time Machine backups are extremely slow

Time Machine backups filled an older, smaller external HD, began deleting oldest files. TM backups began to be very slow, I assumed because of the deletion of older files. I replaced external HD with a new LaCie 3.0TB external HD (p9233). Backups are still very slow, take a very long time. It appears TM is backing up all files each time it runs - literally hundreds of thousands of files each backup when only a few files should have changed from one hour to the next. I have tried on and off as well as setting up TM anew, nothing seems to affect time and speed. Any help?

Sunnyside77 wrote:
... Any help?
See Pondini’s excellent Information Here...
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.htm

Similar Messages

HT1175 Time machine backups are extremely slow after Mavericks upgrade. Why is this happening?

How can I speed up time capsule backup in mavericks?

I can suggest a few things to try but I am yet to see a solution.. I am not prepared to move to Mavericks until a couple of revisions fix the beta standard of some of these things. TM in particular seems to have badly suffered.
Are you using wireless? Especially double hop wireless with the TC as the extend.. don't!!
Use ethernet direct to the TC and turn off wireless.. see if that helps.
Otherwise I reckon until Apple get an update use a local usb disk plugged into the computer and don't try and use TM to network drive. Or if you still want to use the network drive use something like CCC which should be fine under Mavericks since it is a much more robust software. (without lots of bells and whistles.. but functional).

Time machine backup is very slow after migration to Mountain Lion

After I migrated to mountain lion, Time machine backup is very slow. Time machine preference says there is no previous back up although I had Time machine on before migration. It did not help verymuch to connect an ethernet cable between my timecapsule and my Macbook Pro
Here are the screenshots I see:
Should I erase the previous backup made on Lion before backing up on Mountain lion? in this case how do I transfer the Lion backup file on another disk just in case something goes wrong before I have a good backup under Mountain Lion? just like any other file?

After further reading on the forum, the problem was solved: I used the possibility to back up on a second disk (in the preferences Time Machine choose a disk and save on both disks) to make a back up on another usb disk, and then erased the old .sparsebundle file on my Time Capsule. I have then re defined time capsule as the back up disk and then the backup was muuuuuch faster (one night instead of less than 1 giga after 3 days.....)

Since upgrading to Lion, my time machine backups are failing - error message: The backup disk image "/Volumes/Jackie Scanlon's Time Caps/Jacqueline Drabczynska's MacBook.sparsebundle" could not be accessed (error -1). Any ideas?

Since upgrading my Macbook to Lion, the time machine backups are failing - error message: "The backup disk image “/Volumes/Jackie Scanlon's Time Caps/Jacqueline Drabczynska’s MacBook.sparsebundle” could not be accessed (error -1)." I have rebooted the TIme Capsule and it worked OK, but don't want to do that every time. Any suggestions? Thanks

Any new info on this?
I had the exact same problem and went crazy and spent a hecka lot of time trying to deal with my brand new 2TB Time Capsule and almost brand new MacBook Pro. Then I thought I fixed it...and I tried SO MANY things, I don't really know what did it...except taking out any apostrophe's in names of stuff that Apple puts in there...BUT...now it's back.
Grrr...

My Time Machine backups are significantly larger, and slower, over WiFi than Ethernet

My regular hourly backups from my Time Capsule began acting up a month ago. They were abnormally large (25-100 MBs) and took a long time--once, six hours.
I connected my Time Capsule to my MacBook Air through ethernet to repair the disk through Disk Utility, (I turned Airport off on the Air, but not the Time Capsule), and then to rebuild the Spotlight index for the Time Capsule.
Backups over ethernet work just fine now. The backup will happen in two parts, of around 200 KB each, and take two or two and a half minutes. But when I turn Airport on the Air back on, reconnect to the WiFi network, unplug the ethernet cable, and immediately start a new backup over WiFi, the two parts balloon to around 20 MB each, and the backup takes hours.
This is a backup over ethernet, which took 2 minutes, 21 seconds:
Starting standard backup
Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://Martin%[email protected]/External%20HD
Mounted network destination using URL: afp://Martin%[email protected]/External%20HD
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Disk image /Volumes/External HD/Martin Fox’s MacBook Air.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.70 GB requested (including padding), 733.41 GB available
Copied 1082 files (104 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.70 GB requested (including padding), 733.41 GB available
Copied 429 files (153 bytes) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
Deleted backup /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Martin Fox’s MacBook Air/2012-05-11-225349: 733.41 GB now available
Deleted backup /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Martin Fox’s MacBook Air/2012-05-11-200538: 733.41 GB now available
Post-back up thinning complete: 2 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Ejected Time Machine network volume.
This is the second backup after that one, done over WiFi. (The first was incompletely recorded by Time Machine Buddy, but took around half an hour.) It took 1 hour, 54 minutes, 50 seconds:
Starting standard backup
Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://Martin%[email protected]/External%20HD
Mounted network destination using URL: afp://Martin%[email protected]/External%20HD
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Disk image /Volumes/External HD/Martin Fox’s MacBook Air.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 100.0 MB requested (including padding), 733.41 GB available
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Waiting for index to be ready (101)
Copied 26 KB of 20.6 MB, 98 of 98 items
Copied 1485 files (22.0 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 1.72 GB requested (including padding), 733.41 GB available
Error: (-8084) SrcErr:YES Copying /Users/foxmarti/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/ehjqi949.default/places.sqlite-wal to (null)
Copied 1941 files (27.5 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
No post-back up thinning needed: no expired backups exist
Backup completed successfully.
Eject

slyfox1908 wrote:
I live in an apartment building so there are a number of WiFi networks around.
Not to mention cordless phones, microwaves, etc., any of which can interfere.
On iStumbler, my network shows up twice--once on channel 149, with signal strength of 50-65% and noise of 15%--and again on channel 10, with signal strength of that wildly varies from 20% to 90% and noise of 20%. Other networks in the building are on channels 1, 2, 6, and 11. The graph of channel 149 is very smooth, while the graph of channel 10 is choppy.
It's probably using 149, as those numbers are pretty good. Press Alt/Option before clicking the Airport icon in your menubar to see which band it's using.
Watch the band it's using while running a backup. Try other channels in the area of 149. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a "hit and miss" thing.
Why are there two networks? Is that part of the problem? My Time Capsule is located about three feet right and a foot below my desk, so I can't think of a reason why it wouldn't be 100% for both channels.
It's a dual-band router. As I understand it, OSX will pick the best signal.
I really want to know I have a clean, safe, accessible back-up before I replace it though. Right now I don't trust the Time Capsule.
Do at least your last backup via Ethernet.

How can I tell if my Time Machine backups are encrypted?

Hi - I would really appreciate it if someone could help me find out if my Time Machine backps are actually encrypted.
I know that there is an 'encryption' option when choosing a disc for Time Machine to backup to, but the problem is I cannot remember whether or not I actually ticked it (as it was a couple of years ago).
Other info that might be helpful:
- The disk I use Time Machine to backup to is actually a Apple Time Capsule
- I do have FileVault2 enabled on my mac
- I have never encrypted the Time Capsule disc itself (via Disk Utility or anything similar)
- One possible clue might be: When I go into Time Machine preferences, and click on 'Select Disk...' (as if to choose another disk to back up to), and select the disc that Time Machine currently backs up to (i.e. the Time Capsule disc), it does show an 'Encrypt backups' checkbox at the bottom of the window... however this checkbox is unchecked and also greyed out.
Thanks in advance
a_quinn

a_quinn wrote:
- Because I originally created this Time Machine Backup (to the Time Capsule) back in my 'OS X Lion' days,
I wondered; you posted in the Mountain Lion forum, but your profile still says Lion.
that means that my backups now (and moving forward) will continue to be un-encrypted
Correct (as of now, anyway). You cannot encrypt existing network backups. I doubt that will be available in the future, and would take forever.
- The only way to encyrpt my backups now, moving forward, is to remove this Time Capsule disc (from Time Machine Preferences), and start all over again ensuring that I check the checkbox next to 'Encrypt Backup' when selecting the Time Capsule's disc to backup to.
Well, in theory it's possible, but would take forever, squared.
You could archive the TC's contents to a USB drive connected to it, per #Q6 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule).
Then delete the original, start a backup with encryption, and as soon as the encrypted sparse bundle is created, cancel the backup.
Mount the sparse bundle, open the disk image, and delete the Backups.backupdb folder inside it.
Connect the USB drive to your Mac, mount that sparse bundle, open its disk image, and copy the Backups.backupdb folder to the one on the TC.
Depending on how large the sparse bundle is, that could easily take a couple of days, at least, even connected via Ethernet.
Just for testing one day, I encrypted a very small set of existing test backups on a F/W 800 drive - 6 dated backups using a whole 12 GB. Took an hour.
An alternative would be, just do the "archive" and keep the USB drive "on the shelf" for a while. You can always connect it to your Mac and access those backups via the Browse Other Backup Disks option.
Trying to keep a couple of years worth of backups usually isn't a good idea. It's a very complex structure, so the odds of damage increase, it takes much longer to populate the TM browser, and it works slower and slower, and if you didn't need something for 6 months, are you really going to need it in 2 years?

Time machine failing , running extremely slow

Working on a faculty member's MacBook (I'm an IT person at a college) (Macbook 5,1, 2.0 GH core2 duo, aluminum unibody). Her problem is that Time machine is continually failing , and has done so 'for about two weeks'.
This is a typical error:
Oct 25 07:48:11 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Starting standard backup
Oct 25 07:48:11 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Oct 25 07:48:14 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Mac HD
Oct 25 07:48:17 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Deep event scan at path:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
Oct 25 07:53:31 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Finished scan
Oct 25 07:57:44 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: 34.32 GB required (including padding), 512.25 GB available
Oct 25 08:52:28 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Copied 2.2 MB of 26.6 GB, 45136 of 57941 items
Oct 25 09:54:08 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Copied 3.7 MB of 26.6 GB, 54478 of 57941 items
Oct 25 10:56:32 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Copied 23.5 MB of 26.6 GB, 93659 of 93659 items
Oct 25 11:07:05 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Stopping backup to allow backup destination disk to be unmounted or ejected.
Oct 25 11:07:06 xxxxxxxxxxx com.apple.backupd[341]: Copied 94623 files (74.0 MB) from volume Mac HD.
Oct 25 11:14:05 xxxxxxxx-MacBook com.apple.backupd[309]: Starting standard backup
Oct 25 11:14:05 xxxxxxxx-MacBook com.apple.backupd[309]: Error -35 while resolving alias to backup target
Oct 25 11:14:15 xxxxxxxx-MacBook com.apple.backupd[309]: Backup failed with error: 19
(note: the 'stopping backup to allow destination disk to be unmounted or ejected' entry did not correspond to anything of the sort initiated by the user)
Both the Mac and Time Machine drives check out with Disk Utility, and swapping in another disk to try a new Time Machine backup was similarly very slow (about 4 hours to copy ~ 7 Gigs) although it did not fail entirely.
I reformatted the new drive and used Carbon Copy Cloner to back up her system; a complete backup with CCC took just over an hour (~130 gb) and no errors were reported.
The same USB port was used throughout, and the drives were directly connected to the Mac and have their own power supply.
Previously Time Machine was working just fine.
Any ideas? Just set the thing up with a newly formatted drive and let it run the 10 days it's claiming to need??

Spotlight does index the volumes as files are added to them. I'd imagine you can add the Time Machine volume to the spotlight "Privacy" list to prevent it from being indexed, if you're hoping that will speed things up a bit. The Time Machine backups, especially the initial one, can take a while.

File Sharing drops regularly, Time Machine Backups are delayed on OSX 10.7.3. Solution?

Hi there folks,
I'm having an issue with the new 10.7 server. We're running 10.7.3 Server on an Late 2006 XServe with 10GB RAM , connected to a Drobo Pro for Time Machine Backups of our 50+ users via our internal network.
Recently, Time Machine backups have been getting delayed, stating that they can't connect up to the backup drive (which is out Drobo Pro handling 16TB of space). The Drobo Pro hass not unmounted, and all the IP Addresses coming from and going to the Server handling the backups will still ping.
We've also be having trouble with Server resident drives and shared folders that people can mount using the ⌘+K shortcut or "Connect to Server" option in finder. People will choose the IP address, and finder will think for a few minutes then give an error stating that it cannot connect the the specified IP. The only way I can reestablish connection to the file sharing through a remote computer is to remote or physically login to the server, then go into System Preferences and turn "File Sharing" off, then on again. After that, the ⌘+K on a remote machine can find the drives again.
It's driving me crazy why this is ocurring. I don't know why, and people in the office are beginning to complain that they can't access certain files on the servers or are worried because their backups are not completeing.
It should also be known that a majority of the machines we have in the ofice are still running 10.6.8, with only a handful on 10.7, as we haven't had the time to make the major switchover yet.
I'm not the best when it comes to server software or Unix CLI managment (the office outsourced our Network Admin to the east coast), so I'm a bit stumped.
Does anyone have any suggestions to try? Is there a link between the number of Time Machine Users and the connection failures? Should I just tel the NetAdmin to create a script that will restart the File Sharing protocol on the server every couple of hours?
Hopefully someone will be able to help.
Thanks,
JYHASH

I started having connectivity issues to my 10.6.8 server from my 10.7 client immediately after updating the client to 10.7.3. FWIW. Takes forever to connect, when it does. After just milliconds before.

HT201250 Time Machine backup disk not found

I recently reconfigured my external disks, creating a 500GB oartition for Time Machine backup. thefirst time I set up Time machine to use that partition all went well. Seconed time it failed "cannot find backup disk."
This is a 24 inch, mid 2007 iMac OS X 10.8.2. I am using two external backup drives - 1T LaCie with 4 partitions and a BlackX removable adaptor with a WD 1T drive plugged in. Both are formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) In the view below the top "Time Machine" drive at the top is a duplicate of the last drive in the list.
If I select the top drive - I have the option to "Remove Disk" - NOT to "Use this Disk." So I have to select the bottom "Time Machine" drive. The backup will then run once but on the second try I get "Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to "Time Machine". Unable to complete backup. An error occured while creating backup folder." Whether I remove the top listed disk or not doesn't seem to matter, sometimes it finds the drive, sometimes not!
The BlackX is a USB connected directly to the iMac. The other partition on that drive contains movie clips and they run fine.
There is a backup folder on the Time Machine drive with six backups - however I have to "reset" the Time Machine each time to get it to backup. It craps out on the second try every time. Got me buffaloed! Any ideas?

Assuming you have nothing on your Time Machine volume that you need, erase that volume and Verify it from Disk Utilities. Repair if necessary. Then, go into the Time Machine Preferences and Remove the selected drive to use. Now, reselect it and try a backup.

After Server 4.1 update, Time Machine backups are huge

Hi,
After updating to Server 4.1, every one of my Time Machine backups for the machine (Late 2012 iMac) running OS X Server (which is backed up to a USB connected drive) is between 3GB and 7GB. When a backup finishes, I can immediately force a manual backup and it's >= 3GB.
Using the timedog utility, I narrowed the problem down to the OS X Server install, the largest file being:
/Library/Server/Wiki/Logs/postgres-xpg.log
Every 10 seconds, an entry similar to the following is added to this file:
2015-04-16 23:04:31 XPG.5941: matched path for pg_receivexlog file: /Library/Server/Wiki/Database.xpg/backup/000000010000006300000035.partial
This particular log file is around 3GB in size. It appears to have every log entry since I installed OS X Server December 2013. I find it odd this is happening in the Wiki directory as the Wiki service is disabled. I am using the following services:
Caching
Calendar
Contacts
File Sharing
Time Machine (for my Macbook backups)
I went into Time Machine (on the iMac) and deleted all the backups for /Library/Server/Wiki and that freed up 160GB. I could just exclude that from backups, but I don't want to do that. I would like to know why these entries keep getting put into that log and also why, if those entries are appropriate, the log is not rotated.
Any help would be appreciated!
Thanks, Patrick

Hi Patrick,
That particular log-file has had an issue for some time now.
Even when the wiki is not loaded the wiki proces generates errors which keeps on filling this log.
Exclude it from the backup simply solves your backup issue.
However there are some suggestions for "fixing" this enormous log around in the Apple Support Community.
I don't worry too much about it anymore, but you can generate a new file and throw out the old for instance.
As long as you have enough storage you're fine.
Some usefull steps for a fix are mentioned here:
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/113837/library-server-wiki-database-xpg -consuming-huge-amount-313gb-of-disk-space
Goodluck
Jeffrey

Time machine backup is extremely large!

After I upgraded my MacBook Pro (Mid-2012) to Mavericks, I decided to do a backup on my Seagate 500GB GoFlex drive using Time Machine. It started to clear all my old backups and still did not have enough space. So I reformatted the drive and started to back up an initial backup of 383GB. It took over 11 hours, with (unfortunately) a couple of disruptions because the drive was accidentally disconnected. However Time Machine says that I have successfully backed up.
Today, I backed up a second time (it's an automatic hourly backup) and was faced with an extremely long waiting time for "preparing..." (over an hour). An error message then appeared saying that the backup was 211 GB and that I do not have enough space in my drive. (see insert image)
What I would like to know is, why is my second backup so huge? Am I doing something wrong? And what should I do to salvage this? (I know hourly backups should typically not take more than a few GB of space, from experience.)
Thank you all for your help, I appreciate it.

I also have been seeing unexpectedly large Time Machine backups after the initial large backup after upgrading to 10.9, like 1-2 GB. I'm not doing anything other than surfing the web and checking email.

Time Machine backups are bigger than expected

Hi everyone,
I was wondering if anyone would know why, all of a sudden after a day or two ago, my Time Machine is suddenly insisting on backing up well over 4GB at a time? Before then my backups would almost always be below the 100MB mark. Has some update happened that would have caused this?
I have looked in Console but unfortunately am none the wiser. Is there some way of finding out a list of the files Time Machine is actually backing up? If so then I'd be able to track down this problem since I am fast running out of space on my Time Machine backup drive!
Many thanks for listening...
:-Joe

Jowie,
Consider the following info that I have gleaned, some of it may explain some it.
*Incremental Backups Seem Too Large!*
Time Machine performs backups at the file level. If a single bit in a large file is changed, the WHOLE file is backed up again. This is a problem for programs that save data to monolithic virtual disk files that are modified frequently. These include Parallels, VMware Fusion, Aperture vaults, or the databases that Entourage and Thunderbird create. These should be excluded from backup using the Time Machine Preference Exclusion list. You will, however, need to backup these files manually to another external disk.
One poster observed regarding Photoshop: “If you find yourself working with large files, you may discover that TM is suddenly backing up your scratch disk's temp files. This is useless, find out how to exclude these (I'm not actually sure here). Alternatively, turn off TM whilst you work in Photoshop.” (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1209412)
If you do a lot of movie editing, unless these files are excluded, expect Time Machine to treat revised versions of a single movie as entirely new files.
If you frequently download software or video files that you only expect to keep for a short time, consider excluding the folder these are stored in from Time Machine backups.
Files or folders that are simply moved or renamed are counted as NEW files or folders. If you rename any file or folder, Time Machine will back up the ENTIRE file or folder again no matter how big or small it is.
George Schreyer may be describing what you are experiencing: “If you should want to do some massive rearrangement of your disk, Time Machine will interpret the rearranged files as new files and back them up again in their new locations. Just renaming a folder will cause this to happen. This is OK if you've got lots of room on your backup disk. Eventually, Time Machine will thin those backups and the space consumed will be recovered. However, if you really want recover the space in the backup volume immediately, you can. To do this, bring a Finder window to the front and then click the Time Machine icon on the dock. This will activate the Time Machine user interface. Navigate back in time to where the old stuff exists and select it. Then pull down the "action" menu (the gear thing) and select "delete all backups" and the older stuff vanishes.” (http://www.girr.org/mac_stuff/backups.html)
*FileVault / Boot Camp / iDisk Syncing*
Note: Leopard has changed the way it deals with FileVault disk images, so it is not necessary to exclude your Home folder it you have FileVault activated. Additionally, Time Machine ignores Boot Camp partitions as the manner in which they are formatted is incompatible. Finally, if you have your iDisk Synced to your desktop, it is not necessary to exclude the disk image file it creates as that has been changed to a sparsebundle as well in Leopard.

Time Machine backups taking extremely long time and disrupting other computing activity

I have an iMac running the latest version of Lion (10.7.4) and which I have upgraded to a one terabyte hard drive and full memory capability. I back up to a My Book 2 terabyte external hard drive using Time Machine. My iMac is often very sticky, though I've done most of the diagnostics I know of and preferences etc. are seemingly all OK and fcuk -fs gives a positive result! The Mac is often hard to wake from sleep and in particular seems to spend a lot of time backing up very-very slowly, with the result that it frustratingly seems to be backing up most of the time with the consequent effercts on using other programmes. Also the whole thing seems to grind to a halt after a hard days work with quite a few applications open. I'm wondering what can be causing this and what I can do to overcome this very frustrating and debilitating problem?

Hi
I would try the following for now and I am sorry, yes you were clear that it's an external drive.
Rebuild Spotlight
-Rebuild the spotlight index as per http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409 as a first step. Spotlight indexes play a role in healthy backups so this is why this could be a good thing to do.
- When conducting the next backup, after the spotlight re-index, consider connecting to your mac only the external hard drive and disconnect all other devices to rule out other devices affecting things. I suggest connecting devices back one at a time followed by a triggered backup until the issue fails to reproduce itself.
General Performance Issues
- Some performance issues can also be cured through an SMC reset. This article can help in this regard, note that the steps differ depending on the model mac you use: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
--In terms of the mac's general sluggishness
- SMC can help
- open Activity Monitor and check to see if CPU usage is abnormally high or any particular process is consuming an elevated amount of CPU cycles, see http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5146
Check External HD (backup drive)
- If you've run disk utility and have done a repair permissions and repair disk as per user "Radiation Mac" then there is no point doing it again but this should just be a reminder incase you missed it.
-- on a related note to disk utility try;
1) Mount your external hard drive.
2) In Disk Utility, locate your external backup drive. Your backup drive should mount in the Disk Utility sidebar when attached to your Mac.
3) Select your external backup drive.
4) Click Repair.
Test Time Machine backups against a different drive
--If you have a spare hard drive or even a small USB stick, you could back up only a very small amount of data to this second hard drive or USB stick as a test. This article outlines how to exclude from backups, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
Further Ideas
Seeing the logs would be useful if the issue persists. There maybe a reason for the issue but it appears only in the logs which we may eventually need.
I almost forgot
-make sure everything is uptodate with Apple software/firmware and any firmware for your drive if applicable.
If anything is unclear, feel free to let me know, I will provide more details.

HT201250 Time machine backup permission issue

Hi,
We setup time machine backups in an office environment which is managed by a mac OS X Lion server.
Each device on the network (all mac minis) is configured to take hourly backups to the drive on our server.
On some occasions, a device requests an admin username and password whilst time machine is backing up.
We believe this may be caused by backupd attempting to access parts of the file system it is not authorized to as each device has application restrictions set in profile manager. Computers that do not have application/directory restrictions do not get the admin prompt.
Here is a dump of the backupd daemon (and other possibly related processes) whilst a user was prompted for a password:
Feb 1 10:00:25 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Starting standard backup
Feb 1 10:00:25 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://[email protected]/Backups
Feb 1 10:00:47 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Mounted network destination at mountpoint: /Volumes/Backups using URL: afp://[email protected]/Backups
Feb 1 10:01:16 pc-205 diskarbitrationd[15]: SystemUIServer [206]:24835 not responding.
Feb 1 10:01:33 pc-205 diskarbitrationd[15]: SystemUIServer [206]:24067 not responding.
Feb 1 10:01:34 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Feb 1 10:01:41 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Disk image /Volumes/Backups/PC-205.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Feb 1 10:01:41 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
Feb 1 10:03:45 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: 100.0 MB required (including padding), 38.86 GB available
Feb 1 10:05:59 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Copied 1381 files (5.7 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Feb 1 10:06:00 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: 100.0 MB required (including padding), 38.77 GB available
Feb 1 10:06:15 pc-205 sandboxd[513] ([61]): mds(61) deny file-write-data /dev/dtracehelper
Feb 1 10:07:12 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Copied 718 files (2.7 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Feb 1 10:07:16 pc-205 mds[61]: (Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
Feb 1 10:07:17 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Starting post-backup thinning
Feb 1 10:07:36 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Deleted /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/PC-205/2012-01-30-184609 (4.8 MB)
Feb 1 10:07:36 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Feb 1 10:07:37 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Backup completed successfully.
Feb 1 10:07:39 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Feb 1 10:07:40 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.
The backup seems to finish successfully even if the user doesn't enter the username/password. Any ideas why this would be happening and how to avoid it? Could this be fixed by running a full backup as admin so that time machine doesn't have to backup these inaccessible files (to normal users) anymore?
Thanks for your help

mickleroy wrote:
We setup time machine backups in an office environment which is managed by a mac OS X Lion server.
I'm not familiar with the server product, but the actual backup process should be the same as on the client version.
On some occasions, a device requests an admin username and password whilst time machine is backing up.
Does it say Admin password, or could it be a password for the backup device?
Feb 1 10:01:16 pc-205 diskarbitrationd[15]: SystemUIServer [206]:24835 not responding.
Feb 1 10:01:33 pc-205 diskarbitrationd[15]: SystemUIServer [206]:24067 not responding.
Not related to Time Machine.
Feb 1 10:06:15 pc-205 sandboxd[513] ([61]): mds(61) deny file-write-data /dev/dtracehelperThat's not coming from Time Machine. Looks to be related to Spotlght (mds) trying to index something.
Feb 1 10:07:16 pc-205 mds[61]: (Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
We see that occasionally. It seems to be spurious, or at least not a significant problem.
Feb 1 10:07:37 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Backup completed successfully.
Feb 1 10:07:39 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Feb 1 10:07:40 pc-205 com.apple.backupd[436]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.
Yes, that's the "bottom line."
Could this be fixed by running a full backup as admin so that time machine doesn't have to backup these inaccessible files (to normal users) anymore?
No. However a backup runs, it runs as the root user, so has access to everything.

HT201250 time machine backups?

Hi, I bought a new mac so I took all the information of the old one and made a back up on time machine BUT the thing is I had snow leopard in the old one and well the new in the new one and i can't open many files or apps how can I enter in time machine of the old one?

You should have Migrated from the Time Machine backup. That's the easiest way.
You can still do so, but if you set up the new Mac with the same username as the old one, it may be more difficult.
To Migrate the old data, open Migration Assistant from the Utilities folder and follow the prompts.
You can also Option-click the Time Machine icon and choose "Browse Other Backup Disks" and restore files that way.

HT201250 Time Machine backups are extremely slow

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