Time Machine backups painfully slow on NAS (smb)

[mbert]

There is a terminal command which can change the throttle behaviour and make it faster. It did really work for me to get the initial backup done.

Thank you, that was one of the first things I tried. However it did not make any noticable difference.

 

[fivenotrump]

I don't get this: my Time Machine backups to Synology NAS (SMB, wi-fi) seem as fast as ever, faster if anything.

 

[User-One]

Been following this and I'm wondering…when is the last time either of you successfully restored a macOS system from a Time Machine backup located on a NAS?

I had to do this just a couple of weeks ago after one of the kids submerged a running MacBook Air in water. It took all night, plus half the next day to complete. I'm using a linux box as my NAS configured with netatalk

 

[BrianBaughn]

I had to do this just a couple of weeks ago after one of the kids submerged a running MacBook Air in water. It took all night, plus half the next day to complete. I'm using a linux box as my NAS configured with netatalk

What was/is the "Used" space of the restored drive?

 

[vokalemilch]

Hi, so I had a similar issue with Big Sur. My setup is an Unraid backup server where I have an SMB share for my time machine backups. I updated to macOS 11 today and the backups are so slow, unusably so. Researching it, I came across this post:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...fs-snapshots-for-time-machine-backups.2243353

To test if this is an issue with the APFS file system, I created a new share and made a backup. The speeds are much better, orders of magnitude. I guess I will start a new Backup. I hope this helps.

 

[Chris.J]

I tried APFS and couldn't get it to work. Then I released Synology won't mount APFS (as far as I can tell).

As for restoring, my trick is to have the Time Machine drive as a dedicated drive connected to the NAS via USB. Then you can quickly unmount it and plug into your local machine for fast full system restores.

 

[User-One]

What was/is the "Used" space of the restored drive?

It was somewhere in the ballpark of 200GB.

 

[Spike Lightfoot]

This is incredibly frustrating, but satisfying to know others have the same problem. I've tried reinstalling Big Sur, repairing permissions (home directory), and every trick I've seen suggested anywhere... and nothing works. Now I'm back to an external USB drive on my MacBook Pro. How elegant is that?

My Synology NAS is nice, but not quite as useful now. And I'm definitely holding off upgrading other computers in the house to Big Sur.

 

[petterihiisila]

This is incredibly frustrating, but satisfying to know others have the same problem. I've tried reinstalling Big Sur, repairing permissions (home directory), and every trick I've seen suggested anywhere... and nothing works. Now I'm back to an external USB drive on my MacBook Pro. How elegant is that?

My Synology NAS is nice, but not quite as useful now. And I'm definitely holding off upgrading other computers in the house to Big Sur.

I haven't updated in a while, but an encrypted HFS+ sparsebundle destination has been totally fine on a NAS. APFS was impossibly slow. See the previous posts for how to create one and set it as a destination via Terminal. Just make one for test purposes, set it as a destination and see how it goes. I bet it's going to work just like it used to with Mojave, except that you will have to mount the sparsebundle manually after a reboot.

 

[Spike Lightfoot]

I haven't updated in a while, but an encrypted HFS+ sparsebundle destination has been totally fine on a NAS. APFS was impossibly slow. See the previous posts for how to create one and set it as a destination via Terminal. Just make one for test purposes, set it as a destination and see how it goes. I bet it's going to work just like it used to with Mojave, except that you will have to mount the sparsebundle manually after a reboot.

Thanks so much for the tip. I'll give it a try and hope for the best.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

So this thread might be relevant for you. I found that Big Sur 11.01 didn't speed anything up, even when I reformatted to APFS, but when I reformatted from scratch on 11.1 with APFS the speed increase was huge with time machine:

Best Way to Format Time Machine Drive?

So a follow up. The performance with APFS being done under 11.01 vs 11.1 is NIGHT AND DAY. So while formatting and using APFS worked under 11.01 it really was no faster. It still used the old style of backup, just with a new file system. I have about 11TB of data that gets backed up with time...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[Spike Lightfoot]

I haven't updated in a while, but an encrypted HFS+ sparsebundle destination has been totally fine on a NAS. APFS was impossibly slow. See the previous posts for how to create one and set it as a destination via Terminal. Just make one for test purposes, set it as a destination and see how it goes. I bet it's going to work just like it used to with Mojave, except that you will have to mount the sparsebundle manually after a reboot.

Do you think I can trick the system and copy the HFS+ sparsebundle I created in place of the APFS sparsebundle that TM created? That way TM is only involved in the actual backup to the HFS+ filesystem (and not its creation), and the Synology NAS still advertises the share as a TM destination as usual, so it mounts and unmounts as usual, requiring no manual mounting.

 

[Spike Lightfoot]

So this thread might be relevant for you. I found that Big Sur 11.01 didn't speed anything up, even when I reformatted to APFS, but when I reformatted from scratch on 11.1 with APFS the speed increase was huge with time machine:

Best Way to Format Time Machine Drive?

So a follow up. The performance with APFS being done under 11.01 vs 11.1 is NIGHT AND DAY. So while formatting and using APFS worked under 11.01 it really was no faster. It still used the old style of backup, just with a new file system. I have about 11TB of data that gets backed up with time...

forums.macrumors.com

Thanks for the tip. But I'm on 11.1, and it's precisely the APFS sparsebundles created in 11.1 that are giving me problems (assuming it's the disk image that's at fault). petterihiisila's tip to create an HFS+ image seems to do the trick for me. You say you "reformatted from scratch on 11.1 with APFS". We're talking about a sparsebundle disk image created by Time Machine on a LAN, right?

 

[petterihiisila]

Do you think I can trick the system and copy the HFS+ sparsebundle I created in place of the APFS sparsebundle that TM created? That way TM is only involved in the actual backup to the HFS+ filesystem (and not its creation), and the Synology NAS still advertises the share as a TM destination as usual, so it mounts and unmounts as usual, requiring no manual mounting.

Not sure what you mean by that, can't fully parse it.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Thanks for the tip. But I'm on 11.1, and it's precisely the APFS sparsebundles created in 11.1 that are giving me problems (assuming it's the disk image that's at fault). petterihiisila's tip to create an HFS+ image seems to do the trick for me. You say you "reformatted from scratch on 11.1 with APFS". We're talking about a sparsebundle disk image created by Time Machine on a LAN, right?

yea. Delete the previous sparse bundle. Select your nas via system pref time machine so it mounts that drive by itself. Then it will create its own apfs case sensitive (and encrypted if you selected that) sparse bundle drive. But the nature of snapshots is completely different to an imag created under 11.01 vs 11.1.

sorry my suggestion wasn’t helpful. Glad you found another suggestion that works for you.

 

[Spike Lightfoot]

Not sure what you mean by that, can't fully parse it.

The automatic configuration that doesn't work (created automatically by Time Machine

1: Synology NAS//TM-selected Directory/Automatic.sparsebundle (APFS)

The manual configuration you suggested that works beautifully:

2: Synology NAS//Random Shared Directory/Manual.sparsebundle (HFS+ filesystem)

My question is, can I (via ssh) copy/move/rename Manual.sparsebundle in place of Automatic.sparsebundle, so that TM backups proceed via the normal means and don't require me to manually mount its enclosing directory?

My understanding is that
a) TM sees the Synology advertising its directory ("TM-selected Directory" above) as a host for TM backups
b) TM creates the (APFS) sparsebundle there
c) TM automatically mounts the directory because it knows the target sparsebundle is there

The advantage of step c) would be that TM would always mount the NAS share containing the HFS+ sparsebundle so that I wouldn't have to do it manually as you originally suggested.

I hope that's clearer, thanks.

 

[Spike Lightfoot]

I'm answering my own question: it seems to work. Now I have an HFS+ sparsebundle in the TimeMachine directory on my Synology NAS that Big Sur mounts and uses as it would an APFS sparsebundle. Except it works. (So far!) Do this:

a.
Using Disk Utility, create an HFS+ sparsebundle on a NAS share (NOT the share set up on the NAS for Time Machine), big enough to contain the entire backup. Give it a name like "HFS_Plus.sparsebundle" and the disk image it mounts something like "TM_Backup_HFS"

b.
in Terminal type "sudo tmutil setdestination <sparsebundle>" where <sparsebundle> is the path to the sparsebundle on the NAS.
This will tell TM to use that image for backups.
(i.e. type "sudo tmutil setdestination " and then drag the sparsebundle icon into Terminal to complete the command.)

c.
Perform one or more backups to the NAS

d.
in Terminal and logged in to the NAS, move and rename the sparsebundle on the NAS to its sanctioned TM directory, e.g.
mv /volume1/NAS_mount/HFS_Plus.sparsebundle /volume1/TimeMachine/<computer name>.sparsebundle
Mind the space.

e.
In the first directory (e.g. "NAS_mount"), ownership of the sparsebundle was different than it needs to
be in the TM directory. Change it via, e.g.:
sudo chmod -R TimeMachine:users /volume1/TimeMachine/<computer name>.sparsebundle
assuming TimeMachine:users is the user and group set up for TM backups on the NAS.

f.
The sparsebundle is now in the right place, but now you have to associate it to the computer properly for TM to work properly (otherwise it will just start over with another APFS backup). Mount the TM directory on the NAS and then:
% sudo tmutil inheritbackup /Volumes/TimeMachine/HFS_Plus.sparsebundle
Mounting disk image...
Successfully inherited machine store at '/Volumes/NAS_mount/Backups.backupdb/<computer name>'
Unmounting disk image...
Inheriting disk image for machine...
Successfully inherited disk image '/Volumes/TimeMachine/HFS_Plus.sparsebundle'
%

g.
Start backup, and monitor progress in Console.app. Your disk images may need to change size, so watch for this:

48441 com.apple.TimeMachine... 'HFS_Plus.sparsebundle' may need resizing - current logical size is 500 GB (500,000,020,480 bytes), size limit is 1.04 TB (1,044,536,046,387 bytes)
48441 com.apple.TimeMachine... Resizing '/Volumes/.timemachine/MyNAS/3E5DD71A-3924-470B-9450-485EBA431C97/TimeMachine/<computer name>.sparsebundle' from 500 GB (500,000,020,480 bytes) to 1.04 TB (1,044,536,046,387 bytes))

Good luck!

 

[petterihiisila]

e.
In the first directory (e.g. "NAS_mount"), ownership of the sparsebundle was different than it needs to
be in the TM directory. Change it via, e.g.:
sudo chmod -R TimeMachine:users /volume1/TimeMachine/<computer name>.sparsebundle
assuming TimeMachine:users is the user and group set up for TM backups on the NAS.

This may be the step that I omitted when I was unable to do the "inherit backup" step a while back and had to stick to manual mounts. Thanks a lot for reporting this workaround, I'll give it a try over the next few days. 👍

 

[rehkram]

Just a stray thought. I used to schedule my Synology 1511+ NAS to power off late night to early morning.

After intermittent problems with TM not finding the drive (even when it was not during the planned NAS outage times) I stopped that NAS outage schedule. Things have been going well since then, but I cannot swear that was the break/fix. The Macs run 24/7, and so does the NAS

I'm running Big Sur on a mini and Catalina on a rMBP, both are successfully backing up, and restoring is also working. I only trigger TM backups once per week via third party app TimeMachineEditor (an excellent utility BTW) on both machines, 1 day apart so they don't compete for resources. Weekly backups are plenty for my usages, if I need more I can trigger a backup manually.

 

[Spike Lightfoot]

...I’m running Big Sur on a mini and Catalina on a rMBP, both are successfully backing up, and restoring is also working. I only trigger TM backups once per week via third party app TimeMachineEditor (an excellent utility BTW) on both machines, 1 day apart so they don't compete for resources. Weekly backups are plenty for my usages, if I need more I can trigger a backup manually.

I’m glad it works for you now. I also use TimeMachineEditor for similar reasons. It’s an essential utility that should have been absorbed into the OS by now.

 

[wkc-]

I have been super frustrated with painfully slow TM backups for a while now. I think it was bad before Big Sur but is certainly awful after the switch.

There are two things here that totally boggles my mind: 1) Why is virtually ALL (and I do mean ALL) of the data that moves on my network during a back "to" a locally attached NAS, moving from my NAS device to my MacBook, and 2) why can't I find anyone posting about this and explaining why it behaves like this? Perhaps everyone just assumes everyone else knows why. Perhaps no one has looked at the network traffic (doubtful) or perhaps my setup is just nuts (although I do not think so).

The following is typical... "Backing up 500 MB of 1 GB... two hours remaining." Given that nearly all the traffic is moving in a "non productive" direction, this doesn't surprise me.

 

[mikes79]

I can only speak about Synology NAS devices and the associated DSM OS as that is the only NAS devices I have on the network. I backup a couple Macs to the Synology on my network via SMB3 running Big Sur, and backups and restores work as advertised. Performance is a bit slower then just copying things over the network but not terribly so.

In order for the DSM to properly support time machine backups, be sure to enable the following settings within DSM:

Control Panel->File Services->Advanced->Bonjour-><Check> Enable Time Machine Broadcast via SMB

Select Set Time Machine Folders and select the appropriate share for your backup. (Ensure that the user you are connected as has r/w access to the share.)

Setting these options entire that you don't have to manually mount the drive to start the backup. Time machine has never been fast. HFS or AFPS, but I've never had it fail to restore anything.

I would use AFP for a lot of reasons, but to each his own.

Backup 'formats' if you want to call them that should be .sparsebundle if on the network.

M

 

[wkc-]

Thanks mikes79 - already have those settings.

I am holding out for someone to explain to me why (nearly) ALL the traffic between my MacBook and NAS is from the NAS instead of to the NAS. If this is a true requirement of how TM functions then all my years of software design experience tells me either the TM design is ludicrous or my setup has issues. It's as if for every backup (even tiny ones of less than a GB) TM has the need to read the backup from the NAS in order to do some verification or figure out what to write or where to write it. I would like to be able to say "Listen here TM, no one is touching that backup folder except for you so please quit reading it every time you do a backup and assume it is the way you left it an hour ago"

 

[BrianBaughn]

Thanks mikes79 - already have those settings.

I am holding out for someone to explain to me why (nearly) ALL the traffic between my MacBook and NAS is from the NAS instead of to the NAS. If this is a true requirement of how TM functions then all my years of software design experience tells me either the TM design is ludicrous or my setup has issues. It's as if for every backup (even tiny ones of less than a GB) TM has the need to read the backup from the NAS in order to do some verification or figure out what to write or where to write it. I would like to be able to say "Listen here TM, no one is touching that backup folder except for you so please quit reading it every time you do a backup and assume it is the way you left it an hour ago"

Only with a test and comparison of a TM on NAS with a TM setup on an external drive would one be able to determine the ludicrousness.

 

[wkc-]

Excellent! However, I am still waiting for someone to explain why for every single tiny backup ALL (well, nearly all) the traffic between my Mac and NAS is FROM the NAS. There might be a great reason. I'd love to know what it is.

As we speak "ALL network traffic appears from the NAS" and TM says "Backing up: 56.9 MB of 1.79 GB - about 6 hours remaining" -- pretty sure that 6 hours will go down but the fact will remain that data will be moving in the "wrong" directly. I'd just like to know why... call me "from Missouri"