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Resolved Very slow Time Machine backup

You really should format the drive for "OS X Extended Journaled" before using it with Time Machine for maximum speed. The drive is sold with a "universal" format on it to be compatible with both Windows and Macs, but you will be using it for Mac only so should go for the faster performance with OS X.



-howard
 
hfg said:
You really should format the drive for "OS X Extended Journaled" before using it with Time Machine for maximum speed. The drive is sold with a "universal" format on it to be compatible with both Windows and Macs, but you will be using it for Mac only so should go for the faster performance with OS X.



-howard
Click to expand...

My first Time Machine backup to a USB drive (2011 iMac so it is USB2) formatted for OSX Extended Journaled" took about 40 mins for 35 GBytes.
 
I have the 3TB version - it only took 1.5hrs to backup just over 500gb.

I formatted the drive prior to use - perhaps thats your problem ?
 
myuserid08 said:
I have the 3TB version - it only took 1.5hrs to backup just over 500gb.

I formatted the drive prior to use - perhaps thats your problem ?
Click to expand...

That would not be the OP's problem. From his screenshot, it looks like Time Machine is running and performing a backup. If the drive were not formatted properly (HFS+), Time Machine would not run at all.
 
Weaselboy said:
That would not be the OP's problem. From his screenshot, it looks like Time Machine is running and performing a backup. If the drive were not formatted properly (HFS+), Time Machine would not run at all.
Click to expand...

Thats correct, it was formatted prior to starting the initial backup.

So it's now been running for 18 hours and this is what it's currently sitting at: http://i.imgur.com/AJsbFLj.png
 
At the risk of being impertinent, are you running something like ESET Cybersecurity on this machine? I have found that its real-time file system protection can sometimes tie Time Machine up in knots. If you're running this, try temporarily disabling real-time protection and see whether that helps.

If not... dang. I don't know what else to suggest. Are you hearing any noises that suggest the drive may be having trouble? Can you copy large files to it manually, just to see whether the drive is performing basic writes properly?
 
Weaselboy said:
Wow. That is ridiculous. I would stop the backup, then reformat the external. Then reindex Spotlight and start over. Something is not right.
Click to expand...

So I stopped the backup and checked spotlight, and it looked to be stuck indexing the computer. So I shutdown everything and restarted the computer and that seemed to have fixed the problem! Thanks!

This is much better! http://i.imgur.com/6GqQjG4.png
 
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