Time Machine making very long backups

Since I upgraded to os x lion time machine is making very long backups every other day but there are no old backups to find in time machine.
What do do?

Hi AnaMusic,
Thanks for your link to the Pondini link - they are indeed excellentguidance and documentation.
However, my problem does not exactly fit the situation in Section D7, in that Time Machine is not doing a full backup everytime.
Instead after resetting Time Machine it immediately does a full backup then resumes hourly incremental backups, at least for a while, maybe a day or so, before doing another full back. Yet there has not been anything I have done, in terms of working on very large numbers of files, that would appear to warrant or precipitate the need for a full backup.
I am currently monitoring all incremental backups since the last full back to see if I can get a better understanding of the pattern of backups.
Regards, Graham

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As far as TM is concerned you have a new computer, so it will make a new backup. If you don't have the space for both backups then erase your backup drive before backing up the computer.

Time machine takes very long time

Time machine takes very long time to write the back up.
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Try Here > http://pondini.org/TM/D2.html
From Here > http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

Time machine takes very long time and does not finish the backup

Hi,
Time machine is unable to backup my 2014 Mackbook Air 128 GB Drive anymore.
I have tried numerously to initiate a backup but it could only backup a very small volume, less than 1KB, then stall for hours without any progress.
I tries to repair my volume, using the Disk Utility, but it still does not backup, except for the 1K progress.
I have noticed that "Spot Light" indexing is also taking forever. It has been indexing for days without any pogress.
What is going on.
What should I do to fix it.
My latest successful backup was on Jul 25.
Please help.
Thanks.
Tareq

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the 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.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
In the top right corner of the Console window, there's a search box labeled Filter. Initially the words "String Matching" are shown in that box. Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes.) You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard."
Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Note the timestamp of the last "Starting" message that corresponds to the beginning of an an abnormal backup. Now
CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD
so that all messages are showing, 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 into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
☞ If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.
☞ The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
☞ Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Time Machine Endless/Very Slow Backup

Hi All,
I've recently encountered a situation in which Time Machine never seems to think it's finished backing up. In the screenshot below you'll see that it's backing up the exact same amount of data from my HD and an external drive called "Movies" (first time 234.6mb & then started again and updated 41.5mb). The thing is, absolutely nothing was changed in the "Movies" drive, it hasn't been touched or synced with anything since the last backup. I'm thinking that's some kind of clue, but not sure what kind of clue it is. I have done many of the things listed here (including "full reset of time machine" and :
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2057525?threadID=2057525
As well as run Clean My Mac, Repaired Permissions, verified & repaired "Movies" (it was OK), and run Yasu.
Last backup ran for :31min and nothing much had changed. This just started happening recently as outside of major activity TM used to back up in just a few minutes. The good news is the backup was completed successfully, but would love to know what anybody thinks might be the culprit. Oh also backing up to external HD with 1.3TB avail (MB Pro with 750gb HD).

Following the advice of the great Pondini and others, I found a series of steps that worked to correct this situation on ALL my machines!
Here is a link to Pondini's excellent troubleshooting site, which is where I found most of these steps. You might consider just going there and ignoring my steps below, because he is definitely the expert in this field.
http://Pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
The below is kind of a "nuclear option." Not sure which step does what, but know that after doing all of them my incremental backups are now running at :10 - :20 SECONDS where they were taking 40 minutes to an hour before (be forewarned, it takes a while to do all this).
Turn TM off!
Use Disk Utility "repair disk" function on ALL disks (TM, Mac HD, any others that get backed up). Open Disk Utility, select disk, then select "repair disk."
Instead of #2, you might consider using Disk Warrior to rebuild your directories. It costs about $100, but it's an extremely valuable tool and can save your sauce in many ways. Honestly I would advise buying DW and doing that instead of the Disk Utility option, which, while free, does not seem to be as robust a solution.
An alternative to repairing the TM drive is to just start over with a clean, correctly formatted drive (see below). You should still repair/rebuild your MacHD and any other drives that get backed up, though.
Trash this file: com.apple.TimeMachine.plist (found in MacHD > Library > Preferences).
Repair Permissions on MacHD
In System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy add MacHD (your main/boot drive) to Privacy pane, close system preferences, then reopen and remove it (add and remove using -/+ at the bottom of the window). This will force Spotlight to re-index MacHD (wait until it's finished to do anything else).
Make sure your TM HD is formatted properly: should be using the GUID partition table (even if it's not partitioned) and be formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). These settings will appear at the bottom of the Disk Utility window when you select the HD itself (not by its volume name). If you are not formatted this way, it's recommended that you reformat. Unfortunately, this means your existing backups will be no more (unless you have another drive you can use and preserve the old one until you're safely backed up again).
Reset PRAM. Restart your mac and hold down these keys simultaneously: option command p r. Hold them down until you hear the second "restart" chime.
Enter TM preferences and re-select TM disk (when you trash plist TM will "forget" the drive, but all the info is still on the drive) but don't let TM run yet.
In TM options make sure any disks you prefer to exclude/include are either entered or not (TM HD should always & automatically be excluded)
In System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy make sure TM disk is excluded from Spotlight (using +/- as above).
Finally, enter Time Machine and go through your backups to see if there are any backups that shouldn't be there: should be one backup every hour for the past day, one backup every day for the past month and weekly backups before that. If you find more than one backup on a day 3 weeks ago, for example, delete all but the most recent one for that date (on the window of the backup you want to delete you should see the "gear" icon with a dropdown arrow - click on it and select "delete backup."). You have to delete them one at a time so depending on how many you find & how big your backups are this step can take a very long time but it's critical to making sure TM doesn't get hung up on the "finishing" phase. If TM looks back in time and finds more backups than it wants it's supposed to just delete them but it doesn't always work that way and that's one of the issues that can make the finishing stage of the backup take forever.
Restart your Mac.
Restart TM & hope for the best.

Time Machine takes very long time to back up with new large drive

I started using Time Machine on my 17" MBP about a month ago. I was using a 250 GB Samsung drive. When I discovered that TM will back up other external drives (I have several firewire pocket drives), I purchased a 500 GB Cavalry drive with USB 2.0 and eSATA connections. The first backup of my MBP drive (about 85 GB) took several hours (4-6?). I backed up one of my pocket drives (about 60 GB), which took 3-4 hours. Then, when I changed the back-up drive in Time Machine to the new 500 GB drive with the eSATA connection, I stopped it after an hour, because only 2 GB had been backed up. I erased the drive and restarted using the USB connection. It backed up 3 GB in an hour. So, now I'm back to using the original back-up drive. I've performed benchmark tests on all drives (the Samsung 250, Cavalry USB and eSATA 500 GB, and the MBP internal drive) with Xbench. The USB speeds on the Samsung and Cavalry drives came out about the same with a slight edge to the Cavalry drive. The eSATA connection with the Cavalry drive operated at over twice the speed of the USB connections and at about twice the speed of the MBP internal drive (which is a 1.5 Gb/s SATA drive). Basically, I can't figure out why Time Machine takes so incredibly long to back up when I switched to the new drive. Any ideas?
Jeff

It took me 20 hours to backup 32GB out of 65. I don't know why. Using carbon copy clone to download to another backup drive I did it perfectly in about 30 minutes. I expect that those appllications which show applicatiions are at fault and will try later getting rid of apps such as F-10 and pathfinderfor the first download. I have no idea why this is so slow. Everything is so slow.

Time Machine doesn't make backups

Hi,
I have problems with Time Machine. I deleted by error the backup file in Time Capsule, but now Time Machine doesn't create a new one, simply it doesn't work. External disks are recognized (Time Capsule or USB disk) but it doesn't make backups, only appears the "preparing" for one or two seconds and then nothing. It's the same if I try to make backups on a external USB disk.
I can not enter to Time Machine to see the backups.
Looking at "Console" for the last logs there many crash reported, for example:
18/02/09 11:59:26 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[3053] Backup requested by user
18/02/09 11:59:26 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[3053] Starting standard backup
18/02/09 11:59:27 ReportCrash[3054] Formulating crash report for process backupd[3053]
18/02/09 11:59:28 com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.backupd[3053]) Exited abnormally: Trace/BPT trap
18/02/09 11:59:28 ReportCrash[3054] Saved crashreport to /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/backupd2009-02-18-115926GK.crash using uid: 0 gid: 0, euid: 0 egid: 0
Any one with a similar problem???
Is it possible to reset Time Machine in order to restart the backups?
I bought Time Capsule and I can't use Time Machine!!!!
Thanks.

magali mistral wrote:
Hello!
Thanks for your message. The Time Machine Buddy widget was helpful. Although I couldn't mark the text, copy and insert it here.
You should be able to highlight them by dragging your mouse over them, then cmd-C to copy to the clipboard, then cmd-V to copy it here.
Event store UUID don't match for Volume: Macintosh HD
This means TM isn't sure whether the last changes to your internal HD got logged to OSX's File System Event Store, a log of all changes that TM can normally use to see what needs to be backed-up. Most commonly caused by an abnormal shutdown.
Node requires deep traversal:/
Reason: kFSEDBE even FlagMustScanSubDrs /kFSEDBE vent Flag Reason Deep Backup/
Since it can't trust the Event Store, this means it has to examine every file and folder on your HD. Quite a lengthy procedure, of course.
Then it said - I didn't copy that - something like "thinning out" isn't necessary because there was still 368 GB or so space left - 7 GB were backed up - but it did "thin out" some outdated file afterall, whatever that is - hope it didn't delete something I wanted to keep.
All normal. TM automatically deletes it's hourly backups after 24 hours, except the first of the day, which is called a Daily backup. That is kept for a month, when a similar process converts the first of a week into a Weekly backup, and deletes the others.
Only when the disk is near full (TM does need some workspace) will you see deletion of one or more of the oldest weeklies, instead of the first message.
Then the next problem started. It wasn't possible to eject the external drive. I waited for quite some time but each time tried to eject it, a window opened saying that it was still in use and could not be ejected. Although it had defenitely finished doing the backup and the next one was to be done about half an hour later.
Is there anything else on your external drive, besides TM backups? Could you have been looking at it via the Finder, when you tried to eject it?
Try this: de-select the drive (chose the "none" icon) in TM's preferences, then quit System Preferences. Then go back and re-select it. Sometimes this resets TM's lock on the drive.
If not, and it happens again, try turning TM off, then ejecting the TM drive. You shouldn't have to do this -- TM is supposed to let you eject it, then automatically do another backup whenever you re-connect it.
Now that you have a good full backup, just keep an eye on it. Your incremental backups should be very, very quick under normal circumstances.
There are a few things that may cause long backups, such as an abnormal shutdown, certain hardware repairs, not letting TM back up for several days (seems to be about 10, some say), and the use of certain apps. File Vault, Entourage, vmWare, running Windoze are a few. If you do see long backups, post the messages here in a new thread.

Time machine can't open backups after installing Mavericks

When upgrading to Mavericks the installation failed with a disk error. In the shop they formated the disk and re-installed 10.6.8. It appear that there was nothing wrong with the disk anyway.
Of course formatting caused me to loose all data, but I had made a new Timemachine backup before the installation.
Getting the computer back with old OS and empty I called to ask which should be the order of the following:
1. Upgrade to Mavericks
2. Restore my data from Timemachine
Advice was the above so this morning I upgraded successfully to Mavericks. However when I would like restore data (after a few issues making the Mac see the external backup disk) it appears thet Timemachine cannot open the backups older than this morning. It can see then on the right side of the screen, though. Can anyone tell me how to access these backups made under 10.6.8, please.
Another challenge will be that iPhoto does not seem to exist anymore. So if the Timemachine backup gets to work, to where would I restore photos?
Kind regards
Morten

Explanation is that Time Machine created a "new" backup when backup disk was first time connected after migration to Mavericks. This backup was obviously empty, i.e. only containing Mavericks but no user data. Consequently Migration assistant would find no data to migrate.
Solution was to go to Backups.backupdb on the external disk (in Finder) and manually delete the backups created after the migration to Mavericks. Now the Migration assistant saw the backup I created just before the initial failed migration to Mavericks and could succesfully migrate all my data.
I guess you should be VERY careful with what you do manually on the backup disk, but I was out of options and the advice from the local shop worked.

Mavericks Time Machine Server - multiple client backups disappear and merge

Hi there,
In our environment, which is shop environment where many computers are worked on, we use a Mac Pro with roughly 5TB disk space running Mavericks server. Essentially, we rename the computers to be worked on (in the Sharing pane of System preferences), then use Time Machine to connect and backup using a Sharing Only account that exists on the server. The TM backups are verified using Migration Assistant by opening MA and making sure the option to restore is present, without the 'No Backup Volumes found' message, common with TM backups on the network. All OS's are backing up to our server, the oldest being 10.6 and the newest likely being 10.10 now.
Recently, we have noticed some backups seemingly disappear from the server. Just this morning, I looked at a VERY large sparesbundle and got curious.
Upon launching Migration Assistant and opening that very large sparsebundle, I was able to find all the backups that 'dissappeared'. This is very concerning, as all of these backups were verified using MA immediately after having been created. Migration Assistant is quit, the system shut down, and the computer's work proceeds.
A few bits of information:
-Computers sometimes come in to our shop (Apple Authorized) not being able to boot, so their storage volume is booted either via target mode or plugged in to another known good mac via a RocketStor Thunderbolt Dock, or simply directly in to another Mac
-if a computer boots it is backed up natively using it's own OS
-All of this takes place using AFP connections, and over an enterprise network, but devices are all plugged in to the same switch (at this point).
There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the disappearance of the backups, and they are very frustrating to attempt to locate when they 'go missing', especially since these backups are only looked for when a HDD is wiped and data is needed....
Any help is appreciated! As stated earlier, we are an Apple warranty authorized shop in a collegiate environment. Thanks all!
Best,
Chris
Message was edited by: cmburkhalter
Updated to make it slightly more clear

Linc Davis wrote:
I have indexing turned off for all my drives
I suggest you turn it back on, at least on the ones you want to back up.
Is this necessary? It seems to do half the backup without it. If I remember correctly I have indexing turned off not only because I don't use it but also because it was hanging up/using a lot of CPU... If I absolutely must I will turn the indexing back on and wait for it to do its dirty business, but I'm a bit reticent in trading my problem for one that I don't really have an interest in solving.

Time Machine - Restore very slow - impossible to use

Hi,
As far as I can tell my Time Machine backups are OK. When I click the back-in-time arrow with a very small file selected it takes several minutes before I can use it again. The TM gives the impression of having frozen. Similarly if I use the Finder to look at the backup files on the external disk the machine spends very long periods of time 'fetching'. I have no reason to suspect my hard disk - it is the same with another disk. I've read all of the postings on this Forum. I am thinking about re-installing my OS from Install DVD (10.5) and updating to 10.5.5!
I see on the Console things like QL ERROR 'Creating thumbnail' time out and wonder if this is relevant.
Any suggestions before I do something silly?
Bobby

I have now re-installed my system from the instal disk, then the latest combo update. Have checked all the disks to make sure they are OK and healthy. All to no avail - Time Machine simply will not run as intended on this machine. (It works just dandy on my Intel MacBook).
As far as I know Time Machine should work with a PowerPC - perhaps not?
I'm at my wits end. It occurs to me that this is a system problem rather than a Time Machine problem.
Any ideas are much appreciated.
Bob

I have 2 auxillary disk drives for my MacBokk Pro. Time Machine uses one for backup and I use the other for storage, but I am unable to create a new folder or drag and drop files or folders to the aux drive.

I am unable to create a new folder on either of my auxillary disk drives. I can access the files and folders that were there when I transferred one of the drives from a PC. Time machine uses one for backup and I want to use the other to store photos which are large files. An help would be appreciated.

Thanks for the reply. If I reformat the drive will I be able to access the files on it from the MAC. I do not share the drive with a PC. The files were originally created on a PC which I no longer use. I do want to continue to access the files put there by the PC. I would like to not have to copy them over to the MAC hard drive just to use them. The second aux drive is new and works fine because it was formatted by the MAC. I can drag and drop files there and work with just as if they were on the internal drive.

HT5988 I downloaded Mavericks and now my WD Smartware that I use for Time Machine is no longer compatible with this OSX version? How do I make that unit compatible? olefromca

I downloaded Mavericks and now my WD Smartware that I use for Time Machine is no longer compatible with this OSX version? How do I make that unit compatible? olefromca

I agree entirely, been messing with this since the upgrade to Mavericks but I didn't find it quite as easy as uninstalling the WD smartware as it still operates when you plug the drive back in - I think it gets loaded onto the drive and runs from within (?). The advice from WD was that time machine was faulty and I should contact Apple...thanks guys!
Anyway, for the OP's benefit, this is what I found:
1. My problem was that time machine couldn't see any further back than before the Mavericks install, but if I opened up and interrogated the WD drive, the old backups were still there.
2. When TM started doing new backups, it overwrote the ones that it could see, not the oldest ones on the drive. This indicated to
me that the WD software had somehow partitioned off the old backups and excluded that part of the drive from being overwritten. Of course, as the drive was practically full, it meant that any new backups wouldn't fit in the available space.....
3. The only way I could find to resolve this was to use the disc utility to erase and repartition the external drive. This will obviously remove all of the old files and backups, but I was more concerned about keeping a current profile as backup rather than a load of stuff from months ago.
4. Anyway, what happens after the eraseure has completed is that you get the WD icon on the desktop, and you're invited to install the software - this means the software has now been deleted. Juts don't reinstall it, just let TM do it's backup and all is well.
Usual disclaimers and warnings about keeping another copy of your system etc. obviously apply, and I know this is a radical move to delete all your old data but it worked for me. I guess I didn't appreciate that you could use the external drive without the software that came with it and just followed the screen guide.
I'm also aware that if you don't want to use TM to do a complete restore and only want to find one old version of a document, this is difficult. However, you can then install the WD software and find the file but you'll then have to do this all again.....

My Time Machine will no longer back up to my external disk for unknown reasons. It would not accept my password and said the disk is read-only and damaged. How can I copy my files to my Mac so I can repair it?

My Time Machine will no longer back up to my external drive for unknown reasons. It began after a series of power outages (my equipment is protected by a surge protector with battery backup), and was shut down correctly. Then it began by not recognizing my disk and my Time Machine password, although I am positive it was correct. I tried NUMEROUS times to get into it. It says the disk is damaged and needs to be erased and started over. How can I back up my files on my Mac so I can do that? I have no other disk to back up to. I found the files in a folder called "Backups.backupdb", and tried to copy them into a folder, but get the message "The volume has the wrong case sensitivity for a backup." The "lost+found" folder did copy for me. Will I just have to lose 4 years of backups?

Hi there,
I have the same issue. Usually hangs after 10K od sometimes after 18MB of backup file.
Config: iTunes 10.4., Win 7 64bit, iPhone 4 with iOS 4.3.3
I tried all of these without success:
- deleted backups via iTunes / Preferences
- deleted backups from sync folder
- created a new admin user and tried to sync
- reinstalled iTunes
- ran all Windows updates, restarted, reinstalled iTunes
- ran iTunes / Diagnostics (says everything okay, only info which is strange: diag says I am not a admin user, which is not correct)
Nothing helped. Who can help. I hope someone from Apple can take care, as I seem not to be the only one. Actually iTunes is the worst part about iPhone. Hope with iOS 5 and Cloud sync to get rid of iTunes.
Any hints welcome,
Cheers,
Miguel-KA

How to prevent time machine from deleting certain backup folders?

So, I have problem undrestanding time machine. Time machine has made a backup of my files in Nov 2012 and another backup from Jan 2013. There is some files in Nov 2012 that I want to keep them forever and never be deleted. So, they were backed up by Time machine (I have deleted those files from my computer so they're no lonegr excist in my compuetr). Althought they do excist on my time machine under the Nov 2012 folder, I am not able to modify them at all for example, I'm not allowed to copy them somehwere else. Since, I can not make another copy of them, I am worried if time machine delete my Nov 2012 in future and then they will be gone. Can someone please help me in modifying/ controling my folder so it won't be deleted in future?

You are using Time Machine incorrectly, your files will be deleted from Time Machine after you delete them from your Mac, the only variable is when.
Time Machine is a backup, not a storage system.
Restore them now and copy them to long term storage (another hard drive)

HT3275 Time machine cannot complete my backup

Time machine cannot complete my backup because 'an error occurred while creating the backup folder'. How do I solve this problem?

Failed again this morning. I checked my logs and one thing it showed was, "Error: (-50) Creating directory..." I saw this...
ssls6
Re: Time Machine Issue-Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder.
Jan 29, 2012 10:42 AM (in response to HMR529)
one thing you can try
Open system prefs and go to spotlight, in the privacy section add your Macintosh HD and any other drives you back up. Give it a few seconds then remove your Macintosh HD and any other drives you added. Close system preferences. Watch the spotlight symbol on the top menu bar "looks like a magnifying glass". It should have a dot in it as in is indexing all your drives again. When the indexing is over (it can take a long time of your drive is big) now try to create a new backup with time machine...."
As usual, it's gonna take a couple days to see if it works. I'll let y'all know...and y'all should try it also, and let us know.

Time Machine making very long backups

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