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Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5): Time Machine slowness, fix
Time Machine slowness, fix Extremely large or frequently updated files (or worse, files that fall into both categories) can cause Time Machine spike in processor usage, resulting in slowness for other applications or the system in general. The simple solution is to exclude these files from Time Machine's backup routine. You can do this by navigating to the "Time Machine" pane of System Preferences, then clicking the "Options" button. This will bring up a "Do not back up:' dialog box. You can then click the small " " button and choose folders or files you don't want Time Machine Backup.
Common culprits include:
- Virtual Machine hard drive files, including those generated by Parallels and VMWare Fusion. Exclude these immediately.
- Databases that are persistently accessed by some applications. For instance, Microsoft Entourage keeps a huge database file for mailboxes that is updated frequently.
Take this reader report from Marc Garneau:
"It seems that when Time Machine starts running (e.g. hourly), it takes several minutes to do its thing, and it really slows down my computer during the process. It seems like it's almost trying to do a full backup every time. My external hard drive partition is already almost full."
"I figured out the problem. I was running Parallels and my computer was backing up a huge .hdd file every hour while I was using it. I have now excluded my Parallels folder from Time Machine and it's functioning very well now."
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
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Found This Jared !
"If you think Time Machine backs up too often (or not often enough) for your liking, navigate into /System » Library » LaunchDaemons. There you'll find a file named com.apple.backupd-auto.plist. Open it in your favorite text editor, and look for this section:
<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>3600</integer>
Change the 3600 number to some other time interval in seconds, and you'll have changed Time Machine's backup interval. "
:)
Maybe Microsoft will make the next version of their e-mail client so that it doesn't use one giant database file. There's nothing I hate more than a proprietary format that can't be used with anything else. Come on MS, have the e-mails stored as individual files.
</rant>
"Time Machine Error
Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while
copying files to the backup volume"
No clues as to what or anything. Will there be a log somewhere that might give me a clue?
I have the very same: Western Digital MyBook II connected with FW 800 to a fresh install of Leopard on a PowerMac G5 Dual 2 GHz.
Gives me this error without any explanation.
Cannot find any answer on apple.com or wd.com
Seagate 500 GB 7200 External Firewire 800 connection Mac G5 Dual 2 Ghz.
Am trying to reorganize my internal HD's to use one as Time Machine drive
I am backing up about 300 GB's total
I had the same message when I tried to use an external Firewire OS 10.4.9 bootable clone as my Time Machine target. Worse still, the clone became unusable. DiskWarrior 4.0 reported multiple overlapping file references after the Time Machine error occurred, whereas DiskWarrior reported no problems immediately prior to starting Time Machine. Erasing the volume in Disk Utility solved the problem. I received no further Time Machine error messages since then.
(To answer an obvious question, I've been a Mac user long enough to know the pain of keeping only a single bootable backup. I always make TWO bootable clones before any OS update. Thankfully, the second clone is fine.)
I recommend using only a freshly erased HFS+ volume as your Time Machine target... at least until Apple gets T.M.'s quirks fixed. Otherwise you may risk data loss on your T.M. target volume.
- by steven.schwartz February 26, 2008 1:02 PM PST
- Mac Pro New 8 Core Model w/ Leopard 10.5.2- Ran time machine 1st time and it's been copying all day (7+ hours) and has only copied 30 GB of 130 GB drive....so I stopped it temporarily and restarted...now it's copied 46 KB (that's right kilobytes) in about 5 minutes. Time to switch back to Retrospect...this product has some serious bugs.
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