In the past I have reported unexplained random slowness during a full Time Machine backup (both wired and wireless) - where the backup would appear to slow to a near crawl if not appear to be hung up. If the backup would actually complete - it would take about 8 hours (for a 60 gig backup) which should have completed in < 2 hours (even via wireless). To remedy the problem I would delete the sparse bundle (or do a quick factory reset) - and the subsequent full backup (and hourly backups) would complete successfully in a normal time frame with no evidence of slowness. In this scenario there was only one Mac being backed up to the TimeMachine share.
After some careful troubleshooting - I noticed that when I would back up a second (or even a third) Mac - the full backup would run very slowly and take upwards of 8 hours to complete - if it would complete at all. Subsequent hourly backups (even on the initial Mac) would then also exponentially slow down or stall - if the volume of data being backed up was over 1 gigabyte - eventually resulting in all of the backups becoming unstable.
I am able to repeat this behavior on multiple MyBook Live drives - and can remedy the problem by either deleting all of the sparse bundles from the Time Machine share - or by performing a quick factory restore - and starting over backing up on a single Mac.
I am not sure why backing up more than one Mac would make any difference - but the problem can easily be reproduced on any of my MBL’s as well as any of my Macs. The problem occurs on Mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.x.
I will contact WD support on this - but I was curious to know if anyone else is experiencing unstable backup behavior when backing up more than one Mac on the MBL?
Here is the link to my previous previous post - where I noticed that deleting a Time Machine sparse bundle via finder was very slow. I think there is some relationship between the slow backup and slow delete of the sparse bundle when more than one Mac is being backed up.
Slowness When Deleting Sparse Bundle via Finder
~Scott
Did you updated the firmware to the latest version?
Yes - I failed to mention that I have been on the latest firmware since it became available back in November - and I can reproduce the problem on 3 MBLs - two that belong to me and one that belongs to a friend - so I seriously doubt that the issue is related to a particular unit. Hopefully tonight I will get around to sending the issue to WD tech support - just haven’t had time.
~Scott
Yep,
My mba is only 65 gig utilised, a back-up using time machine over wireless is over 8 hours. Over ethernet via a usb rj45 also 8 hour+
As far as I see this is not a network problem for sure.
Hi, I had the same problem like you, stalling Timemachine backups. What solved my problems where the hints in the sticky thread regarding WLAN backup.
Just try mounting your MyBookLive with cmd+k in Finder and access it with the IP of your MyBookLive. Be sure to use Username + password. And then mount the Folder “timemachine”. Somehow the “no user no password standard WD Timemachine access” seems to be bugged.
Then you have to tell Timemachine via Systemsettings to use the partition you just mounted, the one with the IP adress, not the other, usual one. Be sure to use username and password again.
Hope I have been clear. Please use the step by step guide from the sticky thread if something does not work. Since I do this my backups run with up to 30 MB/sek over WLAN!
Regards
Andreas
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Will cetainly give that a try until I get my new NAS
Thanks
Well I love the fact I can see the backups etc… but estimated time to back up my lil mba… 5 DAYS!!! Haha
Peak throughput I see is 1.9 MB/s
This product is so bad it makes me wanna smile 
Thanks Andreas,
I actually did what you suggested and the results were very interesting.
If I map the share using go/connect to server afp://mybooklive.local (cmd-k) - and I connect as the admin user (instead of Gues) and then tell time machine to backup to the mapped share (as admin) rather than to the MyBookLive-backup as Guest - (which Time Machine would normally use) - I am able to do a full backup from a secondary Mac (as well as a third Mac) to the MBL drive - at full speed - no stalling and no sign of slownless - 60 gig backup completes in 48 minutes wired - and a 53 gig backup completes in 1hr 35 minutes - wireless.
I was able to repeat the full backups several times (on both MBL’s) and several different Macs without any problems. The only problem occurred when I connected as Guest - and then the slow behavior returned immediately. I deleted the partial backup and reconnected to the MyBookLive- share and the backup completed in 1 hour and 35 minutes - wireless.
I am finding that it is not necessary to connect using the MBL’s IP address - I can use the MBL name MyBookLive.local and as long as I connect as admin - the backup seem to run fine.
In my opinion it is not practical to have to map the share via go/connect to server and connect as admin - but it does in-fact fix te slowness issue. In order for this to work continuously - it is also necessary to include the Time Machine share mapping in the login items (a bit of a pain).
Something is not right with the Time Machine to the MyBookLive-backup share - with respect to backing up multiple Macs to the same MBL. This has to be a firmware or share implementation issue that WD needs to fix.
As far as the slow - delete of the spare bundle - I did not encounter that issue today - however - I have a suspicion that the slow delete will surface if I try to delete the sparse bundle while it is still configured in Time Machine - even though a Time Machine backup would most likely not be running at the time of the attempted delete.
I will experiment a little bit more before contacting WD tech support to report my findings.
~Scott
Obviously
