Slow back ups

Why is my speed so slow back upping with time machine to the time capsule? The max speed I am getting is 500KB/sec.

Is this the initial, full backup? Or is this an incremental backup? Is the connection wired (100Mb or 1Gb) or wireless (G or N)?
A wired connection is strongly suggested for the initial, full backup. More details may enable others to help.

Similar Messages

TC back ups suddenly moving VERY slow! KB per minute!

Received my 1TB base station today and set it up to replace my Airport Extreme base station without any problem. Started my back up of my Black MacBook. The transfer was going smoothly in MB per second. I went to bed and woke up to find that the initial back up had failed half way through the task. I had to unplug the TC to get it to be recognized by my laptop and then found that my back ups were now moving in EXTREMELY slow KB per second! actually it's more like KB per minute. Absolutely ridiculous! My MacBook is running 802.11n, so this is so frustrating. Any suggestions?!
Thanks. Mark

I am running in to extremely slow transfers (as of right now, my wife's macbook has been "preparing" for about 20 minutes with no noticeable movement). I have made the initial backup via ethernet on two computers. Everything seemed fine (other than the fact that 220 gigs of info on G5 tower took about 13 hours).
I have even had both computers back up wirelessly without a problem.
However, this morning, both just hang on "preparing" and don't seem to want to backup. I tried restarting both computers. That didn't seem to help. Any suggestions?

Can I use my time capsule for time machine back ups and as an external storage device?

I have a time capsule and have set it up so that my time machine back ups are saved on it, but I would also like to use it as an external hard drive. Is this possible?
I know nothing about computers so please tell me in very basic terms. thankyou!

By external hard disk we usually mean one plugged into the computer by USB or Firewire or Thunderbolt.
None of those works on the TC.. it is plugged in by ethernet or use wireless connection.. that means it is a network drive.. not an external drive. The difference might not mean much to you.. but it is totally different to the computer. In the former case the computer has full control of the disk. In the case of the network drive, the disk is controlled by the TC firmware and the files are stored and accessed by network. This has large implications.
So here is my standard response.
Store files on the TC.
This is asked several times a day.. obviously people are struggling with their latest SSD being too small.
The TC is not suitable for network file server.. but many people having no choice press it into service as such.
Major issues.
1. No backup.. no way Time Machine can backup a network drive. No place to backup to.. So all your files will be at risk. And you will need to buy a third party like CCC to do backup.
2. The TC cannot be partitioned and mixing TM backups and data is not great. It was and is and ever shall be a backup device for Time Machine.
3. The drive is slow to spin up and quick to spin down.. there is no control. In fact the TC is so lacking in controls for even the router side.. that you cannot do more than the most basic of setups.
The following are controls on the hard disk side.
Reformat it. You can name the share. You can do a full archive of the whole disk. This will go at a speed of aprox. 30-50GB/Hr so calculate how long an archive of a full 2TB will take.
4. iPhoto in particular can easily corrupt its entire library with wireless networking causing a disconnection to one photo. Even if you do this;;; do not move your photo library... you have been warned!!
Even apple btw say don’t do it.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5168 Although mostly about FAT32 it adds network drives.
5. iTunes can constantly lose connection to the library. The disk is slow to respond.. itunes on the computer will constantly spit out errors. Even in the midst of streaming the TC can spin down the disk due to caching.
6. Do not use any live files on the TC no matter what else you do.. if you edit files in whatever program the file must be on the local hard disk.
7. The only suitable location for most libraries is a computer. You can plug in an external hard disk.
Read pondini for some work arounds.
Q3 here. http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html

Issues with time capsule back ups when external hard drive is connected/not connected

I have a 2TB Airport Time Capsule (ATC) (tall tower type) purchased a few weeks ago and initially wanted it to back up a Seagate FreeAgent 500Gb external drive (formatted extended journalled) as well as three Macbook Pros. The Seagate has a single partition called Lib and is not used for Timemachine backup; it just contains my iTunes library and lots of scanned and archived documents. I want the Lib folder to be accessible to all three Mac users in the house and I've set up all of the Macs to connect and back up to the ATT. They can all see the 'Lib' folder when it is connected to the ATC.
After a bit of searching on the discussion boards I realise that the ATC will not back up 'Lib' when the Seagate is connected by USB directly and that ATT will back it up if it is connect to my Mac and set not to exclude Lib BUT I am encountering some problems with this scenario when I activate time machine.
When I disconnect the Seagate by using 'disconnect' in the ATC viewer in Finder I shut down the drive before disconnecting the usb and reconnecting to the Macbook Pro just as a precaution. When i connect and then activate back up using Time Machine selecting the ATC data folder, it is showing no previous back ups and never backed up. When I had the Seagate connected to the ATT I was seeing back ups as far as 6th May when I bought the ATC. I know that the Time Machine backups are not on the Seagate as I had to reformat it a few days ago and use Data Rescue 3 when I lost the ability to see any files on it after disconnecting it from the ATC. I saw the 6th May backups in Time Machine before I disconnected the Seagate a few minutes ago so they must be on the ATC - just not showing after the Seagate was disconnected.
Can anyone talk me through what may be happening here and advise on the best way of managing this. I'm already planning to buy another external drive as the Seagate is getting a bit old now and I realise I should have secondary back up. I should just say that the reason for bothering with the shared external drive is so that we can all access the photos and household files over the wireless network using ATT. I would just like it to be backed up with minimal fuss if possible.
Many thanks in anticipation of some help with this
I

I would fix the problem by simply installing a more flexible backup software. Carbon Copy Cloner costs US40. And it is licensed so you can load it on all the computers in your house.
It can backup the external drive while connected to the TC, although if you are using wireless it will be sure slow.
Including the external drive in your backup with TM, is just messy. It will work.. and although you are not seeing the previous backups, they are there.. but TM cannot see them until it reconnects with the external drive in place. Once it reconnects it will need to deep scan the previous backup.. you are going to find a simple backup takes far longer than you want. It is also difficult to recover from.
See Q5 here http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
And several other comments in Pondini's KB will be helpful to understand. Sadly the guy who wrote it died before Mavericks came on the scene.. but it has more bugs than ever. TM has become less reliable for a lot of people.. and that is not doing any swapping of disks.
TM is honestly great for simple backups of your OS and particularly for incrementals but getting a clone of the disk like your external is far better for your setup.
See http://pondini.org/TM/Clones.html

External hard drive for time machine back-ups

Can anyone please suggest the best external hard drive to use for time machine back-ups on my iMac?
I also use a 1TB external hard drive for my iTunes library, but I've noticed that it can be slower to access the music than if I used the iMac hard drive......any suggestions? My iTunes library is currently sitting at around 200GB.
Thanks.
Brian

i'd recommend a firewire 800 drive. many folks here speak highly of drives supplied by [OWC|http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire> and [LaCie|http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11156].
JGG

Setting Up a New Mac From Two Different Time Machine Back-ups?

Greetings Apple People,
I am planning on getting a new iMac. Right now my wife I are still using our separate MacBooks from college. Both of them have Time Machine back-ups. We would like to setup our new iMac to have two different users. Is it possible to setup each of the users on the new iMac from our respective Time Machine back-ups?
I know you can do this seamlessly with one Time Machine back-up, but can you do it from two different back-ups, essentially merging the two, while keeping the separate user profiles?
Thanks!

Follow the steps in Pondini's Setup New Mac guide using one computer as the source on first boot. Then, hook up the second computer and use the Migration Assistant to transfer the second user account and nothing else. Don't use the TM backup because it's much slower doing it that way than directly from each machine.
27" i7 iMac (Mid 2011) refurb, OS X Yo (10.10), Mavs, ML & SL, G4 450 MP w/10.5 & 9.2.2

Removing Corrupt Back-ups in Time Machine

I had a serious crash yesterday. While trying to install XCode the machine locked up and I had to reboot by turning it off using the power button. When I restarted I got the folder icon with the question mark. Rebooted using the installation disk and after restoring using the latest time machine back-up I successfully booted the machine, however, my user file, one of 3, would not open, giving the message that the File Vault pass word was not accepted due to an error. I reverted to an earlier back-up and fixed all the problems with minimal data loss. It seems that whatever corruption caused the problem was backed up on the late time machine back-ups.
So, is it safe to simply delete those later back-ups? Time Machine really saved me here and I don't want to make a mistake by deleting something I shouldn't.

Hello M:
I would be guessing if I suggested what would happen….
However, if you decide to delete some of your Time Machine backups, do it INSIDE Time Machine. This is a slow process (one at a time), but it is the safe way of removing old backups.
Barry

Time Machine Back Ups affecting performance.

Sitting here with a 24" iMac, 2.16 core 2 duo, 3GB ram, so fairly new right? Time Machine did its back ups, and is keepin the hourly thing pretty well. The problem is that I can tell that Time Machine is performing a back up as it noticeably slows my machine down. I then have to go to Preferences, Stop the back up, and let it pick up when I am not on the machine. IS anyone else having these issues? And what might a work around be?

It would be helpful to the rest of us and any future searches if you would tell us how the issue was solved. Please let us know.

Time Machine Doesn't Show Previous Back-Ups

Hi,
Just reconnected a TC after a 2 year hiatus. I can connect as a shared disk and see the the contents of the TC which includes a sparsebundle - so I know content is there. But when I launch Time Machine I dont see any previous content. I haven't performed a Time Machine back-up yet.
What would be the best way to proceed? I dont want previous back ups to get wiped. Also, I take it connecting via wired Ethernet would speed up what initial back-up I might perform as much on my computer has changed in two years.

mrhifi wrote:
Hi,
Just reconnected a TC after a 2 year hiatus. I can connect as a shared disk and see the the contents of the TC which includes a sparsebundle - so I know content is there. But when I launch Time Machine I dont see any previous content. I haven't performed a Time Machine back-up yet.
What would be the best way to proceed?
What's changed in those 2 years? Any hardware repairs, especially a new logic board?
If not, try Repairing the backups, per #A5 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum).
If that doesn't help, try the Browse... option, per #E2 there.
I dont want previous back ups to get wiped.
2 year old backups? That makes me wonder if you deleted things from your Mac, counting on Time Machine to keep the backups indefinitely. If so, see #20 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum).
After that long, Time Machine will almost certainly do a new, full backup. That, of course, will take a lot of space, so if there isn't enough room on your TC, it will have to delete old backups, perhaps a LOT of them, to make room. Depending on the sizes, it may delete all but the most recent one, then fail because there still isn't enough room.
See how much space is available on the TC. If that's less than 120% of the amount of data on your Mac (or the estimated size of a full backup under the exclusions box in +Time Machine Preferences > Options,+ backups will have to be deleted. How many is impossible to predict.
Also, I take it connecting via wired Ethernet would speed up what initial back-up I might perform as much on my computer has changed in two years.
Yes, absolutely!
If old backups have to be deleted, that can be an excruciatingly slow process, even via Ethernet. Because of the way sparse bundles work, TM must mount it, delete the oldest backup, dismount it, compact it, then mount it again to see if that made enough space. If not, repeat, repeat, repeat . . .
So, if it looks like a lot of old backups will have to go, and you really don't want that to happen, your best bet is to connect a USB or FireWire disk directly to your iMac and start backing-up to it. That's much faster and more reliable anyway. You should still be able to see and restore from the old backups via the Browse... option.
By the way, please click +My Settings+ at the right of this page, and update your Mac and OSX specs. I'm assuming you're still on the iMac, but clearly not 10.4.5 )

Can you turn off hourly back ups

Is it possible to turn off the hourly back ups in time machine, and just have a daily and weekly back up? I don't think I need a back up every hour, it also seems to slow down the internet while backing up, can anyone help?

Or just turn off your external hard drive.
TM will ask you to turn it on again after 10 days for a back up.

What approach to back-ups?

Hi friends,
Regarding up how to set up external hard drives, back ups, etc, using Carbon Copy Cloner.
I have two Macs:
-iMac Desktop, 931GB capacity, with 560 GB remaining. This computer has all my mp3s, photos, and documents. I want to make this machine my central archive hub + external hard drive back up (have 1TB Western Digital unit that needs to be reformatted due to some error messages anyway. This is a 2005 intel iMac which I will upgrade to Snow Leopard 10.6 soon. Its current internal drive of 1TB I replaced myself as the original one died.
-MacBook Pro: 200GB capacity, 17GB left. Plan on removing about 60+ GB of mp3s so that this laptop stops being so slow. I use this machine for work, audio recording. This is a 2007 laptop with Snow Leopard. I will have some files in laptop, but ideally would periodically move them somehow to iMac the central backup.
-Additionally have a 2nd Western Digital external hard drive of 150GB which currently has about 110 GB of info I plan to transfering to iMac to consolidate in one place. Not sure if its worth the pain in rear to use it, as the more complex setups get, the more work. I would use it to back up docs from laptop, but.....again, I think I prefer to consolidate.
-I have created a cloud backup of my mp3s on Apples music cloud/iTunes Match. I still think its wise to have my own back up at home. Eventually I plan to do the same for photos and all other documents (not necessarily on Apple cloud though). That way I would have the external hard drive back up, plus documents back up in clouds (obviously the
What do you think of:
-Full backup bootable disk image back up of iMac
-On laptop, only backup of existing and new documents onto iMac and also backup applications on the laptop. I assume this would take up less space?
BTW, not interested in Time Machine at all.
Your thoughts on this approach?
Thank you
Sebastian

I've found the simpliest backup method is to have 2-3 clones of each machine, labeled and dated.
1: Desktop machines to have two external drive clones, one back about a month or two (and in a safe place), another more recent. Both offer software and hardware protection.
2: Laptops to have three clones, two on external drives like the desktop machines and the internal drive partitioned 50/50 with A auto-cloned to B every couple of days or so, if I'm on a project and perhaps need "undelete" ability by hitting the clone copy. (partiton clones only offers software protection)
This gives a bootable on the road option, my computers performance stays up as I only cheifly use the first 50% of the drive where the read/write speeds are higher.
If for some reason I need more space, it only takes a second to erase B for more temporary storage.
I Zero Erase all new boot drives, and Free space Zero erase before a large write or partition if it hasn't been done in the last 6 months.
Reducing bad sectors effect on hard drives
You should know if your internal hard drive dies and cant' "talk" to OS X, your fans will race, so booting off a clone is only temporary until you have Apple (and only Apple) replace your newer iMac's drive.
I'll never buy iMac and I don't recommned them to anyone unless they have deep pockets to replace it as soon as AppleCare passes.
Most commonly used backup methods explained

I have 2 macbooks each with an account for me and one for my wife. I use one Macbook logged in with my account and my wife uses the other Macbook only loged in on her account. We both make regular time-machine back-ups each on a separate external disk

I have 2 Macbooks each with an account for me and one for my wife. I use one Macbook logged in with my account and my wife uses the other Macbook only logged in on her account. We both make regular time-machine back-ups each on a separate external disk. Is it possible to update her account on my macbook using her external disk without overwriting my stuff on the same Macbook and vice versa?

Time Machine does not do individual accounts. It records the complete drive. So if you were to use her TM backup on your Mac it would make your Mac just like hers. Both yours and her account on your MAC.
Just copy the missing files over from her Mac to yours. If there are differennt programs on each then they would need to be installed on both.

Am using Macbook pro mid 2010 running on OSX 10.9.5. It does not read my old Seagate back up plus ITB ext hard disk which opens and works on snow leopard. The back ups were made on snow leopard and mountain lion. How do I make it work on Mavericks?

I have been making back ups on a Seagate Back up plus drive on a macbook pro running on Mountain lion. Sadly the mac was stolen and all I had was the seagate back up. I tried opening it on my old iMac running on snow leopard and after several visits to this forum managed to open it. The data was safe and sound. Now I have received a hand me down macbook pro which runs on osx 10.9.5. I'm assuming there is a compatability issue as the drive does not come on at all when I hook it up to the usb port. I checked the seagate drive once again on the imac and its light came on on that system. Then I suspected there may be a problem with this macbook pro usb port. But it seemed to work fine when i hooked my camera cord into it. Is it that I must reinstall mavericks. In which case how do I back up before reformatting or reinstalling. BTW I did the command+ R thingy and repaired my internal Hard disc which was showing errors. What do I do next, your help is most appreciated if you have had a similar problem.

Your 2010 MBP would be able to handle Yosemite, but I would strongly suggest that you get the current problem sorted out before trying to upgrade to Yosemite. I'd also recommend another backup that isn't created by Time Machine if you are thinking of upgrading. SuperDuper and CarbonCopyCloner can make bootable clones of hard drives. If you clone your existing system to a fresh external drive, you would be able to boot from that drive and recover quickly in the event that your Yosemite upgrade didn't work out. Time Machine backups are not 100% reliable.
It's possible that, if your internal HD is the one that shipped with your MBP in 2010, it may be failing. If it keeps needing repairs, that is probably a sign that it is approaching the end of its useful life.
Have you run Disk Utility's Repair tool on the external drive as well?
I mentioned the hub because some people have reported here that attaching their USB 3 drives through a USB 2 hub solved some disconnection problems. A good-quality powered USB 2 hub won't cost much.
My most recent brush with random disconnections involved a nice new OWC drive enclosure. I used the cable that came with the drive, but the drive kept disconnecting. Using a different cable solved the problem. You wouldn't expect that what appeared to be a high quality cable would be a problem straight out of the box, but it was.

Time Capsule - can't get my back-ups off of either of my

I would greatly appreciate help in getting to my back-ups on my 3TB time capsule and then my 1TB older TC. I need to restore some pictures that were backed up in 2013. I have read that the Yosemite OS has really done a number on accessing older back ups. If there is a less technical way to recover those back ups than what I read that was authored just after the new OS came out I would greatly appreciate it!

Answered in the Time Capsule area.. please stick to one area to post.

Can I make one iphoto library from two time machine back-ups?

Hi
I have recently purchased a new Mac Book. I previously had two MacBooks, which I backed up with time machine onto two separate external hard drives.
I did a straight transfer of all data from one of these time time machine back-ups to my new laptop. I'd like to migrate select data from the second time machine back-up to my new Mac Book, and I'd like to start by transferring photos.
My laptop has an iphoto library, so I would like to know if I can import select photos from this second time machine back-up, and how do I do that?
many thanks
Linda

First you need to restore the second Library from the back up. You need to restore the whole library, you can't just gather bits of it, I'm afraid.
Once that's done you have two Libraries. The easiest way to do what you want is to merge the Libraries with the paid version ($20) of iPhoto Library Manager This can be set to avoid duplicates. See the Help on it for more.
This is the only way that will get all the versions and all the metadata.
Other than that you'll need to export from one Library and import to the other.
Regards
TD

Slow back ups

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