Thanks Ronni. Yes, 1TB, spot on. I'm a decade behind the times.
Sadly none of the A through D suggestions were applicable in my case, however TC did eventually reach the end of a back up it seems, though still behaving badly, as in slow. Right now I'm trying to see if Disk Utility can make an assessment. Currently "checking catalog file" with just 1 day and 4 hours estimated time remaining! Maybe my TC has reached the end of its useful life - nearly 3 years old now. We'll see. Cheers, Steven On 21/02/2011, at 8:24 PM, Ronda Brown wrote: > Hi Steven, > > On 21/02/2011, at 4:01 PM, Steven Knowles wrote: > >> >> I have a MacBook Pro running 10.6.6 backing up to a 1GB TC (running software >> version 7.5.2). > > I guess you mean a 1TB Time Capsule ;-) >> >> Suddenly the backing up process has slowed to an absolute crawl, even when >> connected via ethernet. I've rebooted the TC a few times, no improvement. > > A) Did you have a ‘failed backup’ just prior to this slowing down? > > The first backup after one that failed or was cancelled may appear to be > running very slowly, while Time Machine "recovers" the partial "in.Progress" > file from the previous one. > Give it a long time before deciding there's a problem. > > B) The first backup after removing certain exclusions, especially System > Folders and/or Applications, can appear to be extremely slow, as they involve > tens of thousands of mostly very small files. > It may also seem to report that it’s reached the amount to be backed-up, but > then the amount will increase (often very slowly). > > C) Did you notice if Spotlight was indexing when the slowdowns started? > Exclude it from Spotlight, via System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy. > Spotlight might decide to start indexing the backup volume while the backup > is in progress, causing a huge slowdown in backup speed (doubling or even > quadrupling the required time, not to mention sucking up CPU time). > > The solution? Exclude all backup volumes, and remember that after erasing a > drive, you’ll have to re-exclude it; Spotlight has the temerity to forget > about the excluded volume once it’s erased, even if the name remains the same. > > D) If you’re using the Directory Protection feature of Tech Tool Pro, exclude > your Time Machine volume from it. > It can slow your backups down significantly, and it won’t help fix a problem > there, anyway. > In addition, you probably want to exclude its files from Time Machine > backups, as they may cause large backups. > >> >> The TC has 270GB of space available, so I don't see that as an issue. >> >> Any suggestions as to what the cause of slowness might be? Trying to avoid a >> full reformat of the TC if I can. > > Cheers, > Ronni > > 17" MacBook Pro Intel Core i7 > 2.66GHz / 8GB / 1067 MHz DDR3 / 500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200rpm > > OS X 10.6.6 Snow Leopard > Windows 7 Ultimate (under sufferance) > -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Unsubscribe - <mailto:wamug-unsubscr...@wamug.org.au>
