Time Machine Question

Marky · 17 Mar 2012 at 17:57

Hey all,

Ever since I got an SSD last month, I've been using Time Machine so that it makes automatic backups to my NAS.

It's a nice system, and I was happy because I've never had a backup drive before, so it was nice to know that if something bad happened, I would be protected.

However, I'm finding that during the backups if I try and do anything it slows it down or things freeze up. For example, if I'm in Chrome surfing the net and it's backing up, I'll click a link and it will take forever to load, and if I open a new tab Chrome it's pretty much non-responsive. If I try and open an application, it will just bounce in the dock and not load.

Then after about a minute or so of thinking about it, all the stuff I wanted to do will happen. I.e. The app will load, the new tab will launch, the link I clicked a minute ago will open etc.

Anyone get this?

Also - every so often it will ask me to do a brand new backup. It wasn't a problem at first, but now I've filled the drive up a bit, it's got to do backups of 80GB and the estimated time is around 24 hours! That means 24 hours of freezing up and not loading!

Any help would be massively appreciated

Thanks,

Marky

Supernaut91 · 18 Mar 2012 at 20:23

Hey buddy, I have a NAS and they can be really slow at times.

I think it could be well due to access times and the latency on the NAS box. For test purposes only, I would try another medium and see if you get similar results. From that we will be able to verify that it is indeed the NAS causing the issues.

Feek · 18 Mar 2012 at 21:15

I don't see any of those issues on my Time Capsule.

Marky · 18 Mar 2012 at 21:32

Darnit... So maybe it's the NAS...

How are you guys connected to your Backup volumes? I currently have my NAS downstairs, and my Macbook is connected to the network via Ethernet by Homeplugs (Which will increase latency I would imagine

)

theheyes · 18 Mar 2012 at 22:07

Just because your NAS might be a bit slow it doesn't mean it should take down the rest of the OS with it. What is your CPU usage like during the time your computer is acting up?

Supernaut91 · 18 Mar 2012 at 22:10

theheyes said:
Just because your NAS might be a bit slow it doesn't mean it should take down the rest of the OS with it. What is your CPU usage like during the time your computer is acting up?

Actually it really would, copying files especially system files, will draw quite a lot of processing volume in terms of power from the hdd on the mac. Thus slowing down the system when backing up to the NAS. Just try moving 3-4 movies onto a NAS and play a game or run some visualization software. It would take a huge chunk of resources.

So just imagine when having to copy 5gb + of system files daily