13” mid 2012 - Everything says it does support usb 3.0…

as for using Thunderbolt--

You need to look at this with bottleneck analysis, because the slowest component will determine the maximum speed attainable.

Having the really fast transfer rates of ThunderBolt available will not help you in this case, because even the best 7200RPM drives can only source a single burst of data off the platters at speeds around 125M Bytes/sec. Best case, that burst is large, the the size of an entire Track. But that is immediacy followed by a huge dead time while the drive moves its head to another track. Average transfer rates from a rotating drive are often in the neighborhood or half the burst speed, or around 64M Bytes/sec.

So yes, ThunderBolt provides a really fast highway, but no your attached devices can not come near filling it to its capacity.

I also have a 2012 13-inch MBP. The USB3 port speed shows when I connect a USB3 device:

The speed difference is very apparent Real-world example: When I back up the wife's iPad 5 to her 2011 iMac with USB2. it takes about 55 minutes. When I back it up to my USB3-equipped MacBook Pro, the same amount of data is backed up in 6-7 minutes.

Overall computer speed: I upgraded my RAM from 4 to 8GB and saw no noticeable speed difference. I upgraded the old slow 3GBps 5400 rpm hard drive to a 6GBps SSD from Other World Computing and the speed difference was stunning. Real world: With the old roto-drive, Photoshop Elements took 15-18 seconds to launch. With the SSD it is ready to use in 2-3 seconds.

The USB-2 connections you are seeing in the report are all internal busses, except for the Bus labelled USB 3.0. There is no need to run them faster. You appear to not be seeing anything on that Bus because nothing is plugged in to the external USB ports right now.

An external disk drive is a very complex subsystem, and you have chosen an even more complex challenge (Time machine backup). There is very little diagnostic information in what you have done so far.

If you want to know at what Speed is the external drive connecting, then plug in the drive and run the same report you were looking at above. (Or refresh for new data.) I would expect that if the drive has BLUE inserts in its USB ports, and the cable is a genuine USB-3 cable, it will show as USB-3 connection speeds.

N.B.> These must be not just good ports and good cables -- USB-3 requires additional signals to run at USB-3 speeds.

(Apple has decided not to use Blue inserts despite their ports being USB-3 capable.)

The suggested changes to your Mac are a good idea in general, but NONE of them will make the slightest difference in USB-3 performance.

Time machine takes all afternoon to determine what must be backed up in its FIRST backup, before any data is saved. Time machine is designed to run at very low priority in the background, to avoid slowing your important work. It does not get faster if you walk away. Your Boot drive, or the external drive in your enclosure, or both, may be developing some Bad Blocks, which can slow transfer times because some blocks will need to be re-tried to get good data.

Everything looks normal in your screen shot—2012 was the first to include USB 3.

You have to cater to the lowest common denominator which appears to be your " WD 1.5TB external HD," or at least the enclosure which houses the drive being limited to USB2.

¿Do you have a genuine USB-3 cable and USB-3 drive?

¿When you plug it in, does it connect at USB-3 speeds as shown in that same System Report?

If yes to all those, then we can talk about your 30-hour Backup, which is WAY out of line. There may be a specific reason (a drive problem) that is causing it to take more than an afternoon.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

¿Do you have a genuine USB-3 cable and USB-3 drive?

¿When you plug it in, does it connect at USB-3 speeds as shown in that same System Report?

If yes to all those, then we can talk about your 30-hour Backup, which is WAY out of line. There may be a specific reason (a drive problem) that is causing it to take more than an afternoon.

I think it’s this one:

https://www.startech.com/HDD/Adapters/usb-3-to-esata-adapter~USB3S2ESATA3

So if you did a backup of ur computer and it took like 7 mins, you weren’t using Time Machine?

No, not a computer backup. That was in backing up a very full iPad. The example was that it took 55 minutes to back up the iPad over USB2 (2011 iMac) and only 6-7 minutes to back up the same amount of data from the same device using USB3 (2012 MBP).

When you upgrade to an new drive, change the hard drive cable at the same time. It's cheap and easy, and you start with a fresh cable. That cable is known to wear from vibration and cause issues.

First, we need to be sure you are making the connection at SATA 3 speeds. When you plug that stuff in, and run the same System Report you showed above, does it say SATA 2 speeds or SATA 3 speeds?

Once we are sure you are connecting at SATA 3 speeds, we can talk more about whether your drive has additional problems.

One trick for speeding up Time Machine, if you're comfortable with Terminal, is to disable the “throttle” which slows it down to avoid interfering with other use of the computer.

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0

This can greatly speed up a backup in some cases. I’ve found on Mojave that occasionally a backup which usually takes a few minutes will take hours due to excessive throttling.

That command only affects the system until you reboot, so it’s safe to use without long-term effects. You can reverse it by replacing 0 with 1.

What model is the WD drive?

I’m not sure why the OP is doing it other than perhaps any USB ports on the drive are USB 2.0 (480 Mbit/sec).