First Time Machine Encrypted back to APFS taking multiple days.

[steffi]

Is it expected that it takes multiple days to perform the first encrypted APFS backup of 2 TB to an external WD Passport drive?

Seems a very long time compared to the HFS+ that was previously used.

 

[chabig]

It all depends on how the WD drive is connected. Over USB it could take days.

 

[steffi]

It's hanging off USB 3 from my TS3Plus but I don't remember things taking this long when it was HFS+ in Catalina for the first backup but I believe I also would have pre-encrytped the volume in Disk Utility first as well.

 

[chabig]

Yours does seem slow.

For comparison, I started a fresh ™ backup on my 2014 Mini to a 5Ggbs USB SSD. It copied 40GB in about 5 minutes. I was actually surprised. I did preform at the SSD to APFS encrypted case sensitive.

 

[ColdnFrosty]

I backed up 700GB using a LaCie 5TB Rugged HDD connected to the USB-C port. Took slightly under 5 hrs. Formatted APFS encrypted case sensitive.

 

[netnothing]

Curious, do you have a large Photos library? I'm currently backing up around 1.7TB to an external WD Blue HDD via USB-C. It did take many hours to backup. However, I am excluding my Photos library. Currently my Photos library is around 600GB and TM was just choking on backing it up. No idea why. Maybe it's the crazy file structure it uses?

I do have the same 600GB of photos being backed up from raw date based folders with no issues. It's just something about it trying to backup that large Photos library that not only takes forever, but subsequent backups were taking a long time as well.

Since excluding it, everything is backing up fine.

 

[steffi]

If small files are a problem it's like my Library/Mail folder that's the issue then.

fs_usage shows it's working thru Podcasts Library cache at the moment though.

I was going to add this Group Containers folder to the exclusions but whenever I bring up the panel it doesn't let me navigate anywhere.