How Fast Is Time Machine?

[EchoSierra]

I have a 16" MBP with the 1TB of storage on board. This machine is still relatively new to me so I haven't backed anything up yet. I am running Catalina 10.15.7

I would like to regularly start backing things up. This is my first Mac with the Thunderbolt 3 ports, and I was wondering; how fast does Time Machine take to back up? If it can take advantage of the speeds of TB3, then I'd get a TB3 external drive to perform these backups. If it's slower than USB 3.1, then I'll just use a SSD on a dongle.

 

[EmmEff]

It runs in the background and you’ll rarely notice it, even with a USB connected (slower) HD/SSD. The time it takes to backup is entirely dependent on the deltas between runs- if you change a lot of files, the backup will naturally take longer than few file changes.

 

[Navvier]

Well, I have MBP 2020 with 1TB storage and external USB-HDD (Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive 5TB) as Time Machine drive.
With 300GB used on my MBP, it takes nearly an hour to do a weekly backup (I do it manually, every sunday).
I've already done a full restore (if you're interested) - it took 3 hours.

 

[Apple_Robert]

TimeMachine is pretty slow compared to CCC.