Time Machine back-up takes forever

[warmtone]

I am having a bad couple of weeks: Failed SSD, flaky eSata Card (PCI) and now the the Time Capsule seems to be running like a dog.
I am trying to do a first back up of a Macbook Pro - the backup file size is about 80GB.

Time Machine indicated indicated last night "About 10hrs".

OK - wifi network it's a bit slow but I thought it'll be finished this morning.....
14 hours later it needs another 20 hours to do the job!
30 hours to back up 85GB????

This must be the slowest back up process on the planet!

How can I fix this?

 

[chscag]

You have my sympathy. Backing up with Time Machine via WiFi to a TC is like watching paint dry on a barn.

 

[Rod]

warmtone, you have my sympathy as well. Unfortunately a first backup can take quite a while although usually not that long but via WiFi, well, who knows. One thing for sure is that TM doesn't know either. It is infamous for giving inaccurate time estimates. That 20Hrs could change to 2hrs in the space of 5 min. So long as it is actually progressing it will get there eventually. As to your question, "How can I fix this?" your only option would be a cable connection. It may be that something else is hogging your bandwidth but that is a separate issue.

 

[Slydude]

This is why most descriptions of Time Machine suggest doing the initial backup via ethernet.

 

[pigoo3]

I am having a bad couple of weeks: Failed SSD, flaky eSata Card (PCI) and now the the Time Capsule seems to be running like a dog.
I am trying to do a first back up of a Macbook Pro - the backup file size is about 80GB.

Time Machine indicated indicated last night "About 10hrs".

OK - wifi network it's a bit slow but I thought it'll be finished this morning.....
14 hours later it needs another 20 hours to do the job!
30 hours to back up 85GB????

Yes this is pretty slow. I just did a Time Machine backup to my Apple Time Capsule last night. It was about 155gig...and took about 1.5-2.0 hours.

- One thing I would suggest is to unplug everything in your network (cable modem, WiFi router, Time Capsule, etc.)...whatever network hardware you have. Wait 15-30 seconds...then plug everything back in.
- Second...reboot the computer.

See if this helps.

- Nick

 

[warmtone]

Many thanks for the moral support - the back up speed did improve from 20 hours to 10 hours!
Total time was a mere 22 hours for 85GB. That has to be technology at its worst.

Fortunately this is my wife's macbook and the future delta changes are small.
Point taken re using a cable I will try it next time.

In comparison I did a back up on one of my other Mac's (Mac Pro) to a hard drive and it moved 100GB in under 2 hours via Firewire.

Incidentally when the OWC SSD failed the main issue was that once I got the SSD boot disc replaced with an old faithful Western Digital 2TB Black - restoration of a year of back ups completely failed when I tried to restore: "No OSX files found" was the message It was one of the holy **** moments. So I had to rebuild the Mac from scratch and it took days.

There is no doubt that old OSX back up files are there on the Time Capsule but I don't know how to access the contents of the mysterious "sparse bundle" that seems to be opaque. I suspect a Time Capsule corruption issue that may have occurred when the OSSD failed.


For the Mac Pro I have ditched Time Capsule or now as I have lost confidence - I now back up to a dedicated external hard drive - its quicker and more intuitive. Any thoughts on recovering "corrupt" OSX back ups from the time capsule? How do I translate the "sparse bundle" into a readable format that can be analysed?

 

[Rod]

I can't be much help with accessing the sparse bundle other than via the TM UI.
Because I do not think of my TM backup as any kind of archive I usually erase my dedicated TM HD after each OS upgrade.
I only use TM as secondary backup. Because it takes snapshots and regular backups even when the TM HD is not connected it's great for restoring accidental erasures or damaged files.
These days I prefer to use a cloning program. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup changes to my system once week.
A clone uses the same file structure as the OS so it's much easier to work with if either a full restore or selective restore (in the case of a clean OS install) is required.

 

[Slydude]

Double click the sparse bundle and let it open in the Finder.. The Finder will treated as a hard drive. You can view it in Disk Utility and run Disk First Aid. Once it is mounted in the Finder, you can restore from me just as you would a hard drive.