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User profile for user: LostInBerlin
LostInBerlin Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

Time Machine has gotten super slow with Big SUr

I have a MacBook Air from 2015 and use Time Machine on an external SSD drive. I just upgraded to Big Sur, and I was looking forward to a performance boost for Time Machine.


My computer was switched to APFS during the upgrade. I then reformatted my external SSD drive as APFS (Encrypted). Since then, Time Machine has gotten incredibly slow. The initial backup of 150GB took 24 hours. A daily backup of 1GB or so takes at least an hour.


The problem is not the external SSD drive — it can move data as quickly as ever. There seems to be a problem with Time Machine. "Preparing backup" is almost interminable. Even using Big Sur with the backup drive as HFS+ (Encrpyted) appeared to be significantly faster.


Any ideas?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.2

Posted on Mar 23, 2021 6:39 AM

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User profile for user: a brody
a brody
User level: Level 10
83,001 points

Posted on Mar 23, 2021 8:08 AM

A lot has to do with how much storage space is on the original drive. Some of the work is done by temporary files stored on the internal drive, and if you are also backing up with iCloud or another service to the cloud like OneDrive simultaneously, it has to trudge through asynchronicity of the network connection to the cloud location.


To add to complication, any newly added storage device is also indexed by Spotlight, unless you add it to the privacy section of Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Spotlight


Third party utilities can slow you down too. See Etrecheck to ensure you aren't running anything that is slowing you down.

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User profile for user: a brody
a brody
User level: Level 10
83,001 points

Mar 23, 2021 8:08 AM in response to LostInBerlin

A lot has to do with how much storage space is on the original drive. Some of the work is done by temporary files stored on the internal drive, and if you are also backing up with iCloud or another service to the cloud like OneDrive simultaneously, it has to trudge through asynchronicity of the network connection to the cloud location.


To add to complication, any newly added storage device is also indexed by Spotlight, unless you add it to the privacy section of Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Spotlight


Third party utilities can slow you down too. See Etrecheck to ensure you aren't running anything that is slowing you down.

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Time Machine has gotten super slow with Big SUr

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