? VERY long Time Machine back-up ?

[zoltan_egg]

Hi guys,

How long should 600 GB of data take to backup on an external hard drive?
My Time Machine says 22h, encrypted!

Is this normal, or maybe my external hard drive is somehow slow?
It's a new Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim 2Tb, USB 3.0.

Curious to hear from you.
I have a 2012 Macbook Pro with a standard 500 GB HD Hard Drive and 250 GB of a new SSD.

 

[chscag]

Normal. That's a lot of data to backup via USB 3.0. The first backup that Time Machine makes always takes longer as it gathers the data and prepares the backup. Subsequent backups should be faster.

 

[hfg]

Yeah ... that sounds about right for the first backup. With normal usage, subsequent update backups should only take a minute or two.

Note: if you have a virtual Windows installation with Parallels or VMware, that will add considerably to each update since the "virtual" file is probably around 30 GB and will indicate an update any time Windows has been run.

 

[zoltan_egg]

Thanks a lot guys. Was worried that the drive I bought is not suitable for backup.
Do you happen to know if I can backup two Macs onto one external hard drive?

 

[elf69]

Yeah sound right, took 2 days to backup my system on usb 2.0 was about 300GB!

 

[zoltan_egg]

Yeah sound right, took 2 days to backup my system on usb 2.0 was about 300GB!

Did you do it in one go, or paused in the meantime?

 

[elf69]

one go, left it run all weekend

 

[hfg]

Thanks a lot guys. Was worried that the drive I bought is not suitable for backup.
Do you happen to know if I can backup two Macs onto one external hard drive?

No problem ... TimeMachine will create a separate folder for each computer name and enter the backup sessions under the proper folder for whatever computer you have it attached.

 

[MRxROBOT]

I also find that Time Machine takes too long on the initial backups. This is partly because the OS puts a low priority on the task. However there is a way to temporarily resolve this (it will reset when you restart). I only use this on the initial backup as i don't find it as useful on the smaller incremental backups after.

Open Terminal and enter,

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0

The above will not let Time Machine enter low priority and in turn really speeds things up.