Time machine extremely slow on Mavericks; Spotlight never finishes indexing...

Hi there.
I read tons of complaints about this issue, but I did not read any solution, so I am posting this hoping that some good soul can help me and many many others.
I am really careful about OXS upgrades, I have a Macbook Air 13" 4GB/256GB ssd, 2013. last monday I finally did the Mavericks upgrade; Mountain Lion was working great, but as Yosemite coming soon, I thought that was a good time to do it. Guess what...
Time Machine is NOT WORKING. I never had a problem with TM, and I use Mac since 90's, so I even can't remember when it came out, but I trade at least 4 Macs using TM and never had an issue.
Now, over Mavericks, it is taking forever. By just now, after almost 30 hours, it is backing up 8.57 GB of 60 GB. I already did the reformating of the TM's drive, it did not work.
I got a new HD external, reformatted on Disk Utility, turno ON and OFF and ON TIme Machine as I read it many times on other posts, and nothing...
It is justing taking forever.
I bever swa this on any other OSX.
Spotlight is indexing too, takng too long, and probably this is the reason (or one of the reasons...) for TM take so long.
I started over wifi, I have an Aiport Express Extended thing, but my Macbook is really close to the first one, on the chain. I made sure that airport is connectec to this one, and, it is.
I plugged my TrendNet USB-Ethernet cable, which works really great and fast.
Nothing changes, System Preferences recognizes both connections, wifi and ethernet, both are working, but speed did not change at all...
Any hint?
Any help?
Any solution?
I can't really believe that Apple will leave Time Machine users on this ridiculous situation.
But I can't figure it out what to do next.
Thanks a lot for any feedback,
cheers from Brazil,
Andre

I solved the problem...
Go to terminal and enter:
rm -f ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Spotlight.plist
This will delete the preferences file. Restart your computer and it should work. It did for me.

Similar Messages

Time machine extreme slow

since i updated to maverics, the timemachine and the finder are extremly slowly, i mean realy much slowlier than "microsoft-speed". But i checked it again, i closed my MBP an found the white apple on it´s top..... its an apple. In different forums i read, that its a problem with spotlight. The backup with 4.87 GB is now, after 3 hours an 44 minutes at 3.84 GB.
Even Microsoft is faster.
can anyone help me?

Hello Bastlbeda,
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
For more information, take a look at:
OS X Mavericks: If Time Machine is slow
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14169?viewlocale=en_US
Have a nice day,
Mario

Time machine extremely slow and size of backup keeps increasing. please help!

I bougth a external hard drive form western digital, MyBook World Edition, and at first it was working fine, I make a first backup with time machine and it was perfect. last month when I entered time machine to check my backups they were all gone, and now I've been trying to make a new backup but it's moving really slow, like less then 2Gb per hour, and also it seems as it's over but them the size of the backup keeps changing (as soon as it reaches the whole size it gets bigger) Don't know what to do, I haven't changed anything in the system or anything.
The hard driver is connected to a router and I connect to it trhough my wireless network.
ps: sorry my bad english I'm not a native speaker.

UPDATE: It's now trying to do a backup of 31.7MB. It's stuck at 993KB (first it was stuck at 8 bytes, then at 87 bytes, then 88KB), but it took a really long time to get there. So now it looks like it's just slow no matter what. I haven't been keeping track, but it may have been stuck on 993KB now for around 40 minutes.

OS X 10.8 time machine extremely slow, then stops working

after upgrading to Mountain Lion yesterday, I decided to erase & reformated my external HD to use with Time Machine in order to start fresh. It is the same HD I've used for Time Maching backups for the past 2 years and has worked flawlessly. However, when I started the Time Machine backup, it was painfully slow indicating that it was going to take 37 days to backup by 49 GB. I thought it might pickup speed after a while, but instead it just stopped working, displaying the message something to the effect that "no time machine drive was attached".
Anyone else having issues with Time Machine backups under Mountain Lion? Any suggestions"
Thanks.

My problem resolved itself. Please see the link
https://discussions.apple.com/message/19226237#19226237

TIME MACHINE EXTREMELY SLOW. AS IN S-L-O-W.

configuration: 1 Raid internal hd of 1.8 TB, 1 TB backup internal hd using retrospect. 2TB external HD for time machine and copy of home file from
computer's hd. 650gb external hd with clone of computer's hd.
running Time Machine on a 650GB Lacie external hd via fw800 for 6-9 months.
ran out of space. dumped old backups. still needed more space.
moved 250GB of a video archive onto internal raid drives (1.8TB) and backed up
via retrospect to another internal 1TB drive.
made a clone of my computers HD onto the 650GB external drive.
ran time machine onto the new 2TB external drive. as no previous backups were
recognized i did a new first time backup to time machine which took approx 12 hours. made a copy of my home file from my computers HD onto that same external 2TB drive.
now time machine is running backups at 1GB per minute speed as if it is doing an initial backup again. it only used to run for a few minutes. what is happening?

You might want to try formatting your time machine drive and starting again. And yes Time Machine only copies the changes that are made. However, judging by your screen pic and the size of your hard drives, I would assume that you are in the movie business? Therefore I would bet that you deal with constantly changing movie files and pictures that are relatively quite large in size. Since these have "changed" they would be re backed up. Also since you are dealing with quite large quantities of data, it would only make sense that time machine would take a while. One thing you could try is in the time machine preferences pane, click on Options and tell time machine what you don't want to be backed up. I dunno how raid drives work but it might be possible that one of the clones that you created on those drives was backed up too.
Steve

Time Machine, extremely slow, about 1 MB /minute

Something is wrong - it's taking an eternity. I think I've seen it do this before. Any help appreciated.

See #D2 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

Time machine works slow

After updating to Mavericks the finder started working really slowly, bugging and I also hava problems with time machine - the sistem starts to make a backup copy it goes too slow... for a night it can copy only 1-2mb of 500gb?
any ideas how to solve that problem?

Hello stoyanvassev,
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
For more information on this, take a look at:
OS X Mavericks: If Time Machine is slow
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14169
Best of luck,
Mario

Where do I find the time of the latest Time Machine backup in OS Mavericks?

Where can I find the time of the latest Time Machine backup in OS Mavericks?

If you have the Time Machine icon in your Menu bar you can click on it to show the time of the last backup.
You can also look at the Time Machine System Preference pane.

Time Machine WIFI slows down and Fine after I unplug it?

My Time Machine WIFI slows down to an absolute crawl and then after I unplug it and plug it back in, it's back to normal. Can someone help me?

My Time Machine WIFI slows down to an absolute crawl and then after I unplug it and plug it back in, it's back to normal.
This is a classic case of the effects of wireless interference from other networks around you. See the link at the bottom for more information about this.
It might first help to understand why things improve when you unplug the Time Capsule and then power it back up. When you do this, the Time Capsule will scan to find the best available wireless channels to use at the time.
Unfortunately, other wireless routers are doing the same thing all the time, so after a few hours or a day or two, the channel(s) that the Time Capsule was using become overcrowded and the wireless slows down to a crawl. Cordless phones can also create interference issues for a wireless network as well as any number of other electronic devices.
Unless you can convince other users around you to turn off their wireless routers, there is not much that you are going to be able to do to come up with a permanent fix. For now, locate the Time Capsule as far away from any outside walls in your home as possible and use the 5 GHz band for as many connections as you can.
A friend of mine who recently moved into a new apartment complex has the same problem. He has to restart his wireless router at least twice a day, sometimes more on the weekends. Too many wireless networks.....not enough channels.
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth: Potential sources of wireless interference - Apple Support

Time machine super slow on Mac Pro, had to turn of Spotlight

I ran time machine on a external drive and had no problems for years. I swithed to a larger internal hardrive and the problems began. I read about turning off Spotlight and I did and everything worked fast. But do I need to turn it off with every back up? I'm on lion, did mountain lion fix the issue?

It would probably take 12 hrs to zero (long full format, zero all) a 2TB drive, and especially any that are green, that don't have 7.2k spindle speed.
The USB interface and some external cases when used with TimeMachine "drop off" and stop communicating and act as if they are no longer present. So interface like USB plus variable rpm and the fact that green drives will park the head and 'sleep' regularly, causes trouble.
Disk Utility : Help menu. Tells you how to use Erase or Secure Erase.
Use to be there was format or initialize. Now it is all just erase and erase options.
And even then zero all does not always find or map out a weak sector.
Internal would be native SATA interface and avoid the 'other' interface and the external drive bridge (has to have a bridge to talk to SATA over USB or FW interfaces).

Back up problems with Time Machine since I have Mavericks

Since I upgrade to Mavericks Time Machine is not able to back up my MacBookPro.
Not only it is slow but it never ends.
Each time it seems to reach the end of the back up 150 or 200 mb are added to the amount to be saved.
Without end.
Before Maevroicks I had Montain Lion and it was fine.
With my iMac I have no probleme with Mavericks ????

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message that corresponds to an abnormal backup. Now
CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD
so that all messages are showning, and scroll back in the log to the time you noted. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

Time Machine Restore Slows Computer

I have a 24" iMac (Early 2008) 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo computer. The original hard drive failed last week and I had it replaced with a new 1TB HD at a local Apple Premium Service Provider shop. The computer worked like new when I got it back...and then I restored my backup from Time Machine.
So I've had this Mac since 2008 and since then I have gone through almost all the OS X updates. I have downloaded and installed tons of apps, which over the years have become out-of-date and thus no longer work with the current OS. I have downloaded countless of albums and movies, tv shows etc, etc. I have deleted some of this information over the years. I have also been through a few different external hd's using Time Machine, but I always transferred all the old information to the new ones. Could someone tell me if bits of leftover information are now saved on my HD and are thus causing the computer to perform extremely slow? If this is the case, what would be the best approach to deleting this information? Thanks in advance!

When you have the problem, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.
If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Scroll back to the time you noted above. Select the messages entered from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat, whichever comes first. Copy the messages to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).
The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of it useless for solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough. It is never necessary or helpful to post more than about 100 lines. "The more, the better" is not the rule here.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Extremely slow after Maverick install; will this improve?

My late-2008 Macbook is running extremely slowly after installing Mavericks this morning. Will this improve as the computer sorts out the new software internally? Or would I be better off going back to Mountain Lion via last night's TimeMachine backup? Thanks.

Spotlight indexing after a new installation can take between half an hour and several hours. The computer will be slow during this time, tagged files may not show in Finder and Time Machine backups may miss files. Also, it will index all partions, internal and attached externally, unless excluded in Spotlight>Privacy. This can increase the time factor considerably. Look for processes mdworker, mds and mds_store etc, in Activity Monitor.
There may be other things slowing the computer initially, such as Dropbox re-populating, apps updating, virus definitions etc.

Illustrator CS6 EXTREMELY slow since Mavericks update

After upgrading to Mavericks, my whole CS6 suite is extremely slow. It's taking several minutes just to open a file, and equally as long to save. Has anyone else had similar issues? I've looked on the forums and see where other users have issues with it crashing, but I do not have that problem.

I too am having the same problem with all my CC including Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and Acrobat Pro after installing Mavericks. I cannot find Adobe Drive anywhere on my system. I've done a manual search in all the usual places and a spotlight search with no luck. I'm desperate to solve this extremely slow opening file problem. It's causing me major problems keeping up with my work. Barely have time to post here.
Model Name:          MacBook Pro
Model Identifier:          MacBookPro5,5
Processor Name:          Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:          2.53 GHz
Number of Processors:          1
Total Number of Cores:          2
L2 Cache:          3 MB
Memory:          8 GB

Time machine very slow with mountain lion

Time Machine backups seem very slow with Mountain Lion.

Same problem here. I just upgraded from Lion to Mountain Lion. I only got 19 GB of space, but Time Machine wants 10 hours, whereas in OSX Lion a full backup would take just under an hour, and incremental updates were lightning fast.
I even sat it up to do it overnight, but on 8 hours it was only half way through only 10 GB. I can't live with that in the future.
Im trying to backup on a SD card which seems to work very good in Lion. Im on a 2012 Macbook Air using a SSD.
My bite of the apple has been somewhat sour. I tried reformatting the SD card, well knowing that I would lose old backups. But still the backup is extremely slow. Now I can't install Lion or Mountain Lion from scratch without having to wait 10 hours for TM backup or installing tons of applications and settings again. Bummer. I'm never going to early adobt a OSX upgrade again.

Time machine extremely slow on Mavericks; Spotlight never finishes indexing...

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for