Smart Update taking forever

[badlydrawnboy]

Dave,

I went to do my normal Smart Update of my internal full volume to external FW clone, and instead of taking the usual ~10 min, it's been at it for more than 2 hours.

Yesterday I did install the 10.5.2 combo update, but I installed it on my Sandbox - not my full volume. I'm not sure why the update would cause the backup routine to take so much longer, especially when it wasn't even applied to the volume I'm backing up.

Backup speeds are 24 MB/s from the internal full volume to external FW clone.

Any ideas?

[dnanian]

Drop me a support note and we'll try to figure it out.

[TMay]

BDB

Just a thought.....sure you didn't accidentally do an "erase, then copy" rather than a "smart update?"

[badlydrawnboy]

Originally Posted by TMay

BDB

Just a thought.....sure you didn't accidentally do an "erase, then copy" rather than a "smart update?"

Nah, I didn't do that.

The Smart Update finished without incident, so I figured I'd run it again to see if it took excessively long. It finished in under 2 minutes, so while I'm not sure why it took so long, it seems to be working fine now. I'm going to start up from the clone now and make sure all is well.

[TMay]

Hmm. One of those GORK (God only really knows) deals maybe. Glad it worked out.

[jpm]

My smart update happens at 3:30am, going from one internal drive to another. I just got home from work, and it had been going for four and a half hours, and got as far as trying to prepare my back up drive. I stopped it at that stage thinking it had hung, and started it again. As of now, it has been preparing my main drive for over an hour.

I will let it run all day and see if it completes, then try another backup to see if the problem goes away, per the original poster, but I wanted to let you know it wasn't an isolated incident.

cheers.

[dnanian]

If it's "preparing" your drive for any more than a few seconds, it's quite likely the drive -- or something else attached -- has had a severe failure. Power everything off, remove from AC, wait a few, then start back up with as few peripherals attached as you can, then try again.

[jpm]

Thanks for the advice, but the problem is not just with one drive. This morning when it had been running for four and a half hours, it had finished step one 'preparing' my main drive, and was stuck doing the backup drive. I stopped it then and started it again, and I've just checked...this time it spent nine and a half hours 'preparing' my main drive without getting past that step.

[jpm]

I did shut down the computer, and started it back up, then ran disk utility on both of the internal drives (the main drive and the backup target), and they both check out ok, no problems at all.

[dnanian]

OK, but there's more than just the computer involved here. We'll continue in the support case I've received.

[gusboy]

I have also noticed this since upgrading SupeDuper to run with 10.5.2.

Window 2 - Copy files run very slowly, <10MB/s.

If I stop then re-run programme rate is >200MB/s.

But obviously I am not happy to stop and start too often.

[dnanian]

That's because it's already re-copied the things you're restarting from. It's only going to go slowly if there's more data to copy.