Time Machine back up is really slow to access

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Level 1

83 points

Time Machine back up is really slow to access

I had to do a clean in stall of the OS and when I went to use my Time Machine back up to restore from using Migration Assistant, it was taking days to complete and never did finish. I thought it was an issue with Migration Assistant, so I thought I would manually drop the files from the Time Machine back up, but that's the same thing.

I can see all the files on the drive, but access feels slow. For instance, a single 2gb file copies over really quickly, but a folder with a number of files totalling 2gb takes about an hour, or more. Trying to copy my 350gb Photos library and Finder says "preparing to copy for two hours now before even starting to copy. Who knows how long it will take, if ever.

Tried on another Mac and using another cable. It's Thunderbolt 2 and USB2. Nothing fixes it. Why is this happening and could it be related to the files being a Time Machine back up? I'm very worried as this is my back up of all my files!!

Posted on Nov 3, 2021 2:47 PM

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Answer 1

Eric_G1

Community Specialist

Nov 4, 2021 1:01 PM in response to Cartoonguy

Hello Cartoonguy,

We see you're having issues restoring from Time Machine, and we'd be happy to help.

There's some good tips here that may help out: If Time Machine is slow on Mac

After that, this page here has a handful of further Time Machine related troubleshooting that you may try as well: Time Machine troubleshooting on Mac

Cheers.

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Answer 2

Eric_G1

Community Specialist

Nov 4, 2021 2:54 PM in response to Cartoonguy

Cartoonguy,

Do you know if your USB drive supports USB 3, or have access to a USB 3 drive? We ask as the page here mentions, "If your backup disk is a USB disk, or a USB disk attached to a NAS device, ensure the disk supports USB 3 and is connected to a USB 3 port on your device."

If Time Machine is slow on Mac

With macOS Big Sur and later, Time Machine performance is significantly improved when using an APFS-formatted backup disk. Do you know which format your drive is currently in? If not, you can check in Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities), and then select the drive to check the format it lists.

Are you using the latest version of macOS Monterey, or one of the earlier macOS versions?

Take care.

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Answer 3

Cartoonguy Author

Level 1

83 points

Nov 7, 2021 10:30 PM in response to Eric_G1

My USB drive is connected via Thunderbolt 2. My drive was formatted MacOS Extended Journaled. Might reformat and try making it APFS if that will help speed up access, but I don't see why the format should make it take 300 hours to restore a back up. I am on the current public release of Monterey.

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Answer 4

Eric_G1

Community Specialist

Nov 10, 2021 11:52 AM in response to Cartoonguy

Cartoonguy,

Thanks for clarifying.

We can understand wanting to get to the bottom of that, and we'd recommend reaching out to Apple Support directly for further investigation. This link can help with the support request: Get Support

Cheers.

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Answer 5

Cartoonguy Author

Level 1

83 points

Nov 4, 2021 1:46 PM in response to Eric_G1

Thanks for the help, but none of those suggestions apply to this. It's just slow to access files and a full Migration indicated it would take 300 hours.

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Time Machine back up is really slow to access

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