Time machine to airdisk taking forever...maybe a gig an hour

So I set up my Airport Extreme Airdisk as a Time Machine disk. I started the first backup and its taking forever...if I am lucky its sending a gig an hour on an 802.11n machine.
Any thoughts?

It seems that Time Machine uses Apple's disk imaging mechanism.
The version of this in Leopard uses a helper app called diskimages-helper. You can see it in the process list of Activity Monitor when running Time Machine, Disk Utility or Carbon Copy Cloner disk imaging.
This app seems to have issues with images larger than around 80GB. I have now shown that whether started by Time Machine, Disk Utility or Carbon Cloner images between 120 and 200GB run flat chat (disk limited) for the first 80GB or so and then slow down dramatically.
How much data are you trying to backup?
On the upside, once the first copy is made. incremental Time Machine backups seem to be very fast. Perhaps if you set time Time Machine with enough exclusions to get the first image down to 80GB, it may be possible to add the rest later. I have not tried this.
On the topic of should you use an airdisk: I see that it is a requirement that the backup disk/share supports ACLs. I think Airdisk might be OK for data files, but probably will not restore a full working boot disk. Have you tried that?
Bill Northcott

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Time machine back up taking too long

Why is time machine taking so long to back up? I just downladed the update and it's still dragging

You are entitled to 90 day telephone support from Apple. Try contacting them.
Apple Support Contact
Apple Support contact - Telephone

Trouble to set up Time Machine to Airdisk

I bought an airport extreme base station and would like to use time machine to back up my system to airdisk. However I failed to set it up.
I start with System Preference. Here is what I experenced: I mounted the airdisk. Clicked the "Choose Backup Disk..." button. My airdisk did show up. But when I select it and click the "Use for Backup" button. Nothing happened. I still have the "choose backup disk..." button.
In fact the above process works on my macbook, but fails on my Macbook Pro. I wonder whether some people can help me out. Thanks.

It may depend on the different OS X version you may have on your Macs. With 10.5.5 I can select my air disks as backup volumes.
Regards
Peter

Time Machine Backup now taking excessive time.

My time machine backup from my 13in MacBook Pro to my 2TB time capsule is now taking an excessive time. I left it on all evening and all night from 6 pm. At 7am it said it has backed up 3 gb of 28 gb.
I ran a verify disk using Disk Utility. It took 6 hours to complete and found no errors.
A time machine backup to a second drive took 6 hours to complete for the first time.
Any clues as to the issue.

Good idea about the file copy. Will get back with further details.
Yes am using Yosemite and yes am connected via Ethernet. Have also turned off wireless on the MacbookPro to ensure traffic is only via Ethernet and shutdown all other programs ie a time machine backup was the only activity. Also ASUS router traffic analyser showed no significant external upload or download activity.
Last backup was about 8 April. For some reason I associate that with a recent update.

Time Machine to AirDisk -- laughably slow.

So I connected a USB drive to my Airport Extreme Base Station (simultaneous dual band II). And configured it as a Time Machine for my MacBook Pro. They should be connecting at 802.11n speeds, right?
So far, I'm more than 50 hours into my first backup of 150GB (and it's still going)
I think USB 1.1 is faster at this point.
Is there something I can do to speed it up? Is there something I'm doing wrong that's making it go slow?

Navarro Parker - wrote:
Your information is out of date. Apple added Time Machine support to AirDisks with the last firmware update.
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10329460-263.html
No. The article you reference was wrong when it was posted, over +*two years+* ago.
The article Jolly posted was revised last fall, when Snow Leopard came out.
And see: Mac OS X 10.5: Time Machine doesn't back up to AirPort Extreme AirPort Disks dated last July.
That configuration does work, to a degree, for some users, for some time. But it's +*not reliable+* and is +*not supported by Apple.+* Call AppleCare and you'll get little, if any, help.

Time machine back up taking 1 day so removed external HD, now taking TWO days?

Hi,
I started my time machine back up last night and the estimated time it said it would take was 1 day. I woke up this morning and there was still another 15 hours left. I am only backing up 533GB - is this normal?
I thought maybe my external drive was effecting the backup so I removed it and when I did the time machine started again, now backing up 324 GB but says it's going to take TWO days?! This makes no sense.
Could someone tell me - is it normal for TM to take a day to back up 533GB (certainly can't be normal for 324GB to take TWO)?
And what are the general tips for helping time machine move faster? I'm running OSX 10.8.5.
Thanks

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. We're users here and don't speak for "Apple Inc."
How is your (external, I'm assuming) Time Machine storage connected? USB 2, USB 3, FireWire, Thunderbolt, or Ethernet network? If network, then is the storage drive connected with Ethernet or a USB device connected to the network router? 100Mbit or Gigabit Ethernet? Does your MacBook Pro have a wired or wireless connection to the network?
If it's over a network, to a Time Capsule or another NAS (Network Area Storage) device then yes, it could take a day or longer. If your Time Machine drive is Thunderbolt-attached, then that seems a bit long, but there are a number of variables, including the size(s) of the files and types of files(s), and whether they're compressed or encrypted.
My mid-2007 MacBook (1.5Mbit/sec theoretical maximum SATA speed, 3GB usable RAM, 500GB 7200rpm hard drive) took almost two and a half days to back up 350GB to a network-attached Lenovo/iomega server I use for Time Machine via a wireless connection. I don't recommend wireless, by the way, because when verification fails (quite often in my experience), then TM erases all the old backups and demands to begin anew. It required about 18 hours to back up the MacBook when directly connected by RJ-45 Cat 5e cable over Gigabit Ethernet on both devices.
My mid-2011 iMac backs up 350GB via FireWire 800 to a 1TB Time Machine drive in an estimated 11 hours. (I don't know precisely, I went to bed and it was done in the morning.
Time Machine (and most every OS X update and App installation program, for that matter) seems to be quite incapable of predicting ACCURATELY exactly how long the process will take.
I also use CarbonCopyCloner to create a bootable system backup occasionally, so I'm not stuck for a day and a half of restoring from TM just to get back up and running.
Ancient computing proverb: "You can never be too rich or have too many backups."
Message was edited by: kostby

Time Machine: What's taking up all of that space?

I have a 500Gb External Hard Drive, partitioned in halves for Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner.
Recently I had a main hard drive failure. CCC saved my bacon (Oh yes. It's worth having!). The local Apple Boutique restored all of our info to a new 1Tb drive from CCC on the external drive. When I brought the computer home, I popped into Time machine a couple of times to retrieve a few bits of recent info, as CCC was about three weeks old.
On approximately the third visit to TM I noticed that it was only showing a few days of information instead of the year or so that was there previously. At the same time, TM began showing an error message that "This backup is too large for the backup volume.". Although it only shows a few days worth of info to draw from, it says that only 103Gb are available of the 232Gb in that partition.
I'm doing a Disk Utility disk repair right now, but are there other things I should be looking for?
My system is:
Hardware Overview:
Model Name:          iMac
Model Identifier:          iMac5,1
Processor Name:          Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:          2.16 GHz
Number Of Processors:          1
Total Number Of Cores:          2
L2 Cache:          4 MB
Memory:          1 GB
Bus Speed:          667 MHz
Boot ROM Version:          IM51.0090.B09
SMC Version (system):          1.9f4

Thanks Ralph. That is a very useful page.
I found the cause of the problem: A common cause of this is restoring all your data, either to the original internal HD or a replaced one, depending on the restore method and what version of OSX you're on. In some cases, everything restored is treated as new, so must be backed-up again.
So TM is recognizing the restored data as new info and wants to stack it up on top of itself again. That explains why there isn't enough room.
My new question is this; the quick and easy would be to erase all of that old TM backup from the partition and start over. Is here no way to change its mind about duplicating all of that data and have TM carry on as normal? With my crappy and intermittent memory it would be nice to be able to go back into TM if something suddenly comes to mind along the lines of, "Hey! Whatever happened to that 'thingy' that we had last fall? I would like to have that again but it got deleted along the way somehow."

Time Machine Back-up Taking Too much Space

I have only been a Mac owner for a little over three months.
I set up Time Machine with an external hard drive three months ago. My Mac hard drive has used 64.16 GB of space out of 249 GB. Ny external drive (300 GB) however was full and deleting on its own in just 10 weeks. Three days ago I erased everything on the external drive and started over. After the first full back up, 50.61 GB of space was taken. Now three days later it is up to 102.54 GB. What am I doing wrong, or what do I need to do to correct.
This is a 'home use only' computer and daily changes are minimal.
Thanks for any feedback.
Roger

Hi mahlquist,
I have exactly the same problem on three macs running SL. Sometimes it simply wants to backup the whole drive instead of creating an incremental backup. The worst thing is that it deletes old backups first (when there is not enough space for an additional complete backup) without asking you if you want it to do that. So, the best solution is to deactivate the automatic backup in TM and start it manually only. Watch at the TM window, see what it is doing when the backup starts. When it starts to delete old backups, cancel the backup, restart your Mac and then try again. In most cases, TM then works again and creates incremental backups. Another bug is that sometimes it backups even folders that are in the list of excluded folders. I didn't manage to break TM of doing that. So I decided for a reinstall of SL on the machine that was affected.
This is one of the most annoying bugs in SL. TM is nearly unusable in SL. I also tried a complete wipe and install of SL to make sure that it wasn't the upgrade from Leopard that causes the broken TM. But this didn't solve the problem. In general, there are lots of bugs in SL. In the meantime, I would say that SL is one of the most annoying versions of OS X that Apple has ever released. Lots of bugs in such a manner are really new to me as a Mac user for many years.

My Time Machine (TM) is taking way longer "Cleaning up old backups" if i haven't even backed my computer up for that long.

I havent backed up my computer in almost 2 years due to a complication with the Time Machine (TM)
But now it is fixed and it spends hours on "Cleaning old backups"
And when it comes to backing up computers I am always scared to fix it blindly because our Time Machine backs up 3 other computers.
Is there something I'm doing wrong or do I just need more patiences?
HELP!!!

Cancel the backup.....unless you want to wait a few more days to see if it might work.
Erase the Time Capsule drive using AirPort Utility
Start over again with a new backup
Ethernet will be 4-5 times faster than wireless for the first backup

Why is time machine lagging and taking over 8 hours to backup?

Hi,
I have a 15" Macbook Pro (Mid 2012) running 10.8.5.
I started a time machine back up last night before going to bed - the dialogue box said it estimated 3 hours to complete...
8 HOURS later and it's still backing up. It's showing "about 5 seconds" and has been for about 15 minutes. There's still about 20 GB left and it's hardly chipping away at it.
Can anyone tell me why this might be happening? This machine is relatively new and it's my first time backing up to time machine on this particular machine but never had any problem with my previous Macbook Pro.
Any help would be great. Here's a screenshot if it helps...
Thanks!

Thanks for your reply AIRoRo.
Is there meant to be an actual setting specifically for time machine in Energy Saver? That's how I understood your reply.
Or I misunderstoo that then, I presume I should untick "put hard disks to sleep when possible"? each time I back up?
Although I never had to tick / untick this box each time I backed up in the past.
Here's a screenshot of my settings:

Time Machine Snapshots are taking too much HDD space

It has taken so far over 155 GB as you can see on this link.
http://i1102.photobucket.com/albums/g445/comics_addict/ScreenShot2011-11-22at112 226PM.png
It appears under "Other" due to me disabling the snapshots on the terminal but unlike I read it still hasn't erase the items from memory.
Any help?
Thanks for your time.

Local snapshots are periodically condensed into daily or weekly snapshots to minimize the space used on your disk. If your disk is low on space, Time Machine stops creating new snapshots, and some or all existing snapshots may be removed to make space available for applications to use. If sufficient disk space becomes available again, Time Machine resumes creating local snapshots. This means your disk will have the same amount of available space as it would if Time Machine were not enabled.
OS X Lion: About Time Machine's "local snapshots" on portable Macs
Disk Space considerations:
Local snapshots require space on your internal HD (and any other disk/partition that Time Machine is backing-up). Time Machine will, however, delete some or all as necessary if it gets too full. The exact criteria are not documented, but appears to vary depending on the size of the volume. On a very small volume (under about 50 GB), it may be as little as 75%; on larger volumes (1 TB or more) it may be as much as 90%. This is doneindependently for each disk/partition. Time Machine does not send any messages when it deletes snapshots.
Pondini's excellent blog on Time Machine: 30: what are local snapshots?

My Time Capsule/Time Machine has been showing Preparing Backup for past 48 hours continuously!

My Time Capsule reported Full the other day. I now have only 26.8MB of 497.96 GB available. Since then it seems to backing up continuously. The Time machine preferences window shows "Preparing Backup" andnothing else, and it has been doing so for at least past 48 hours. Any ideas as to the problem?
Stuartyboy

Yes, the problem is the drive is full.
If you have other files or TM back from other computers, TM on your computer having issues will not be able to delete enough to get sufficient space to backup.
Read how to clean up and delete parts of backups.. http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
Not a good idea though.
Solution.
1. Buy a new bigger TC.. cheaper (Than the original 500GB at least), faster and now the smallest is 2TB.
2. Plug in a USB drive.. archive the TC.. then erase it and start a fresh set of backups.. April 1st great day to do it.
3. Open up your old TC.. remove the 500GB drive and install a 2TB (if Gen1 a 3TB might even work). Google for how to do a hard disk upgrade.
Problem.. old power supply could die the day after and then the total cost would approach 1. Better to backup, wipe the 500GB and sell it on ebay and buy a new TC with 2 or even 3TB (2TB is better value IMHO).
4. Plug in a USB drive .. formatted to HFS+ and use that as the target.
Very slow. much slower than the same drive plugged into your computer.

Time Machine Problem - New Internal Hard Drive, Now Backup Takes Hours

Need some help!
Background.
Almost 4 year old 24" aluminum iMac; 4 gb ram; 500 gb hard drive; OS 10.6.8.
About 2 months after Alpple Care expired, the internal hard drive failed (New Year's Eve of all times!). Everything else working great.
Had a Mac technician I know install a new 750 gb drive for me. I cloned back from SuperDuper, and was ready to go. The SuperDuper external is 1.5 TB, partitioned - one half TM, the other half SuperDuper.
All apps, internet, mail - fine.
I hooked up my existing Time Macinne (probably not a good idea), and the next backup failed.
Did some research, and since I have plenty of archived backup anyway, decided that the best thing to do would be to erase the TM external, and start fresh.
Did that, and as expected, first backup took a couple hours.
The Problem.
Now, every incremental backup takes 4 to 5 hours, even if no data has changed.
"Indexing" lasts for 45 minues; "Backing Up" reads 600,000 plus files, which also goes on for 30 or 40 minutes (approx.), and wants to Calculate changes etc forever; then the actual backup starts out at 10 kb, and in 20 minutes is at 30 kb and then after about an hour I start getting into gbs and the blue bar progresses pretty fast after that. Then "Finishing Up" takes approximately 2 - 3 hours.
Not right. :~(
What I've Done to Toubleshoot.
First, I re-erased the TM external.
Then reset PRAM and did an SMC reset on the iMac.
Then backed up to TM again. The same problem persisted.
So next, I repeated that process (other than backing up), and I also deleted from the Root Library/Preferences com.apple.timemachine.plist, and from Home/Library/Preferences deleted com.apple.finder.plist. Then rebboted the iMac. Then I did a Disk Utility verify of the empty external - all was/is fine. Then I ran DiskWarrior on the iMac and all was fine; repaired permissions on the iMac from DiscWarrior as well. Then, I did another TM backup to the external, which took a couple hours since it was backing up to an empty drive.
Next 3 incremental backups still take 4 to 5 hours, even if nothing has changed on theiMac.
The Request.
Please if anyone can give me some easy to understand step by step options I might try to get TM working correctly again, it will be most appreciated.
If I've left out any details that might assist, please also let me know.
The problem computer is at home and I'm at work, so if any logs are needed, I can post those later today (but in that event, please tell me exactly which log to post and how to isolate it from System Profiler or Console (as there are many logs to choose from and I want to provide the proper info if someone needs to see a log to assist)).
Thanks in advance!

Pondini,
Did every step in D2 (green box) - except did not reinstall Combo Updater which I did late last night.
After that, did a TM backup - started at 6:15.
All apps were off.
Sequence of events and facts:
At start, 434.03 0f 500.1 GB available on the external TM
Last backup shown - 7:58 AM; Oldest Back Up - Yesterday at 9:56 (that's the 1st backup after I reinitialized the external for the 2nd or 3rd time trying to get this thing figured out)
Upon starting and doing the backup -
Preparing 250,000 (approx.) items (too quick to get the final number) - Parenthetically, this AM it was over 600,000; probably has to do with turning off Spotlight per your D2 instructions
Next message -
Backing Up 6.96 GB
Hung at 2 kb to 90 kb for 20 minutes before progressing
Ultimately, at 1.78 GB the progress bar started moving rapidly (as it should) - so this isn't a cable connection issue - the Backup phase took 22 minutes, but from 1.78 GB to 6.96 GB took only a few seconds; I have seen this precise same sequence repeatedly the past 2 days
Next - Backing Up (the candy cane blue and white progress bar) - Preparing 140,000 items - took 12 minutes
Now shows 426.95 GB available on the external
Next - Backing Up (no count of items shown) - started at 7:05 and went until 7:45 (40 minutes)
Next - Finishing Backup (blue/white candy cane progress bar; no count of items shown) - started at 7:45 - went until sometime after 8:15 (can't give a precise time because I need to sit down and eat :~) )
Backup completed (between bites of chicken) at 8:23.
Over 2 hours - something isn't right.
Also, TM Prefs tells me that the Latest Backup was at 7:44 - odd.
Anyway - to take a step further, here's the TM Buddy widget info you might need:
Successful Backup: 02:06:32.
There is no log entry or data showing.
Just as I sent this, a new backup started, and it appears to be going through the same routine, from Preparing ....
Gotta eat.
Please post any further instructions and I'll do what I can tonight.
Thanks!
What is the problem? How do I speed this mother up?
Thanks!

Migration assistant taking forever, says it has 127 hours till completion???

Setup my mac before I wanted to transfer from my old computer. Today I connected my PC to my Mac via wifi using migration assistant. The only issue I am having is it's taken about 6 hours already with only about 1cm of loading. I am transferring about 450GB. I just checked it and it says it will be completed in approximately 127 hours!!! Any help would be great, I'm not sure what to do. I do not want to wait 5 days, that seems a bit stupid. Thanks

Sure.
Your router should have (at the least) three Ethernet ports and you can use a cable to directly connect to your router, rather than using WiFi. Your PC most certainly has an Ethernet port where you can plug the cable from the router.
Depending on which MacBook Pro you have, it will either have an Ethernet port (non-Retina) or you can purchase a Thunderbolt>Ethernet adapter from Apple. Then you'd use a cable to plug into the router so that both machines would communicate much faster than over WiFi.
Call back if I haven't explained too well,
Clinton

Help on time machine it says one miniute but its been 2 hours

help me

There's no other way to track it other than Find My iPhone. All you can do is wait to see if it ever goes back online. The serial number will only help to identify it as yours if it is ever found, and the IMEI number would only allow your carrier to blacklist the phone so it couldn't be reactivated on their network, if the carrier offers this service.

Time machine to airdisk taking forever...maybe a gig an hour

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