I came across this low-level approach to debugging Time Machine
performance issues:
https://medium.com/macoclock/time-machine-backups-too-slow-5ed1e5e347a4
I left for last the most complex, low-level debugging tool you have
available allowing you to monitor your filesystem access in real-time.
This is a powerful tool allowing to investigate what is the actual
root cause of Time Machine’s delay. In particular when you face long
delays waiting for “Preparing backup” this kind of investigation
can shed light to otherwise mysterious delays.
Open a Terminal and issue the following command:
sudo fs_usage -w | grep -i backupd | grep -i fsctl
Upon entering your user-credentials you will start seeing many, many
files appearing in your terminal window. These are the files that Time
Machine is checking for changes. By carefully observing the patterns
and folders being accessed, you can identify folders which may have
thousands (or even, tens of thousands) of small files that you don’t
need to backup and by excluding them you can considerably speed up
your backup times.
I verified that this works and it seems safe enough even for those less
familiar with command-line utilities (but just in case, you halt this
tool with Ctrl-C).
Glenn P. Parker
glenn.par...@comcast.net
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