Time Machine Backup taking way too long

Question

Level 1

17 points

Time Machine Backup taking way too long

Hi there.

Something is wrong with Time Machine Backup. I am backing up my MBP to a Seagate 4TB drive., connected directly to my laptop There's at least 1TB of data free on the drive. However, Time Machine took over 24 hours to backup 20GB of data. Last night it took 12 hours to backup 1GB of data.

The drive is fine and I ran Disk Utility on it. If I copy 1GB of data to the drive, it takes less than a minute.

I also tried running in Safe Mode and conducting a Time Machine backup - same result. Time Machine backup is just crawling.

I am running Mac OS 10.15.7 on a MBP 16" with 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD internal hard drive.

Would appreciate some assistance with this because I cannot have my laptop stuck for days connected to the backup drive. This should be taking minutes, not days.

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 11, 2020 1:32 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Nov 11, 2020 1:54 AM in response to Nasmedia

Hi

First follow all the steps here:

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204412

Reply

Answer 2

Nasmedia Author

Level 1

17 points

Nov 11, 2020 7:56 AM in response to TonyCollinet

Hi Tony

I read that post yesterday and done everything that was relevant.

This wasn't my first backup.

I don't consider 20-30GB as a large change.

Network speed is irrelevant as I am connected directly (USB) to the drive.

I am not running any anti-virus software (as you will note, I have said that I tried backup in Safe Mode)

I have checked my drive using Disk Utility and it is fine,

So, what next?

The issue is with Time Machine because I can simply copy all the new files to the drive and it wouldn't take more than 30 minutes.

Reply

Answer 3

Nasmedia Author

Level 1

17 points

Nov 17, 2020 4:14 PM in response to John Galt

Hi john

the screenshot isn’t the problem. The problem is the backup.

since I first posted this question, I’ve upgraded from Catalina to Big Sur, hoping that upgrading to the latest OS would fix the issue. It hasn’t.

so I’ve posted the screenshot so you can see the backup problem.

Reply

Answer 4

Nasmedia Author

Level 1

17 points

Dec 5, 2020 2:09 PM in response to steve626

Hi there.

I have now tried this on a new drive with the same results happening.

The first backup took a normal amount of time but was certainly fast. Subsequent backups the day after were ok. Now, this week (after a week of not backing up), we are back to being slow again - the following screenshot shows that there's only 6 minutes left to backup. However this 6 minutes has been showing for the past hour!

There is something very wrong here. Fresh backup disk but Time Machine is still acting in the same manner as I reported before. It's not a failing disk as I have now tried two backup drives. This is a Time Machine problem.

Reply

Answer 5

Nasmedia Author

Level 1

17 points

Nov 17, 2020 2:56 PM in response to Nasmedia

See the screenshot below - can't understand why it would need 13 hours to backup 22GB!

There's definitely something wrong with Time Machine.

Reply

Answer 6

Nasmedia Author

Level 1

17 points

Nov 17, 2020 11:28 PM in response to John Galt

Appreciate your point John but the end result is that it doesn’t solve the issue and the point of my post is to try and find a solution.

do you have a solution?

Reply

Answer 7

John Galt

Level 10

155,150 points

Nov 18, 2020 8:05 AM in response to Nasmedia

Nasmedia wrote:

do you have a solution?

Describe the problem. If the problem is that Time Machine is taking a long time, that's not a problem. Read If Time Machine is slow on Mac.

Reply

Answer 8

Nasmedia Author

Level 1

17 points

Nov 18, 2020 3:25 PM in response to John Galt

John, you're not helping. I'd like to hear from others please. Thank you for your input but it doesn't help and you don't understand the problem. Please do not reply further to my post.

Reply

Answer 9

John Galt

Level 10

155,150 points

Nov 18, 2020 3:38 PM in response to Nasmedia

If the problem is not as you have stated, then please explain it in terms others are more likely to understand.

Reply

Answer 10

John Galt

Level 10

155,150 points

Nov 17, 2020 5:55 PM in response to Nasmedia

The reason for pointing out the discrepancy is that it's not at all unusual for TM to take a very long time subsequent to a macOS upgrade. Big Sur especially so.

It's only been a week or so since I upgraded, and still have several Macs to go. My TM analysis is ongoing, with a variety of Macs of different ages models and configurations using many TM backup drives deployed in every conceivable supported arrangement. It would be irresponsible to draw any conclusions regarding its performance until my research is complete, so I encourage you to follow that practice.

In the meantime don't draw any conclusions with Disk Utility—any hard disk drive can be operating in an advanced state of failure with no symptoms at all other than slow performance—which you may eventually determine to be the case. But it's way too early to draw that conclusion.

Lastly, 13 hours to back up 21+ GB isn't particularly exciting. Both time and data values are estimates. The amount of time to copy xx GB using the Finder is unfortunately completely irrelevant and unrelated to TM.

Reply

Answer 11

steve626

Level 6

13,713 points

Nov 18, 2020 9:50 PM in response to Nasmedia

I don't have Big Sur yet, am using Catalina. However the slowness you describe can result from large files, for instance if you have a virtual OS/machine, that can slow the time machine backups. However I think a possible cause is a mechanical failing drive.

I always have two Time Machine backups, in case the first one goes bad. Which does happen, and has happened to me. How about you obtain a second Time Machine backup drive, connect it, and set up Time Machine to use both (it will alternate between them). See if the same problem occurs with the new disk. If it does not, I would suspect the original backup external drive. Disk Utility checks the file system but the drive mechanism may be mechanically failing, or the drive may have physical problems, which can greatly slow its performance -- Disk Utility cannot detect many of those types of problems. Copy a small file or files might be fast, but larger jobs can run into problems with the drive that is failing.

Reply

Answer 12

John Galt

Level 10

155,150 points

Nov 17, 2020 4:00 PM in response to Nasmedia

Nasmedia wrote:

I am running Mac OS 10.15.7 on a MBP 16"

Something is wrong because that's a Big Sur screenshot.

Reply

Time Machine Backup taking way too long

Similar questions