2 TB drive? Time Machine

It should be compatible, but I wonder if you partitioned and formatted it properly before using it.

Drive Partition and Format

1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.

2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.

3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.

4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.

5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.

6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

You may need to check if this WD drive needs jumpers to work correctly in your computer. Your model does not support 6.0Gb/s drives. Some WD drives need jumpers or firmware changes to enable them to work properly with controllers that only support up to 3.0 Gb/s interfaces.

Your current Internal drive may be near death.

Did you keep the old backup as well? Don't be in a hurry to erase it until the new one completes, and not for a while after that.

This could indicate a problem with your Main system drive (the Source) rather that the new Time Machine drive (the Destination).

The only situation (other than those detailed in Kappy's typical excellent advice) where I would expect to see such slow numbers are across Wifi, or if there was a problem with cabling to your backup drive.

If Time machine continues to make progress (is not stalled out) I would let it keep trying.

One of the best ways to eliminate fragmentation is to do a Backup and Restore. But the problem at hand is not likely to be fragmentation. Mac OS X de-fragments large files automatically when they are opened. If you are seeing real slowness, that is sometimes attributable to Bad Blocks.

Every block on disk is written in a semi-redundant form with additional bits added for correcting for small bursts of errors that sometimes happen with magnetic media. The kinds of codes used are called Fire codes. But sometimes even with Error Correction, the data cannot be read without error.

So the disk controller does a retry. 10 times. Then the error is reported to the Disk Driver. It does a retry. 10 times. each of those is retried. 10 times. Then the error is reported to a higher level in Mac OS X. It does a retry. 10 times. We could be up to a thousand retries now. If the data ever come out correct, we move on. If not, you could be here a while trying over and over to get correctable data.

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A drive controller has a "private stash" of spare blocks, scattered across the surface of the disk so that some will always be not-too-far away. When new data are supplied, a troublesome block can be re-written and today's controllers can check for integrity immediately after the re-write. If the data are recorded properly, nothing changes. If the block is still not working after being re-written, it is permanently removed from play and a spare block is substituted. The controller notes the substitution on its internal Bad Blocks list. The blocks available to the Application do not change -- it is as if nothing happened.

The conventional way of doing this has been a pass of writing all zeroes to the entire drive. If there are not too many spares used, the drive passes. If the drive runs out of spares, or too many are used in one pass, "Initialization Failed" message is displayed.

The problem is, drives have gotten so big, this takes all afternoon, and may result in the drive being declared dead after all that time. So what often happens if a drive is suspected of Bad Blocks, is a new drive is installed, and the old drive will be returned to you for YOU to take all afternoon and into the night fiddling with it to see if it will perk up, or be declared a doorstop.

Clone your system to a newly formatted drive.

Best bet: clone just the OS and apps to a Samsung 840 120 or 250GB SSD.

Move all the media files to 2TB drive.

Is TM drive internal? if not how is it connected?

As for your current system drive, CCC and use checksum on copy to insure integrity of each file.

Are you running Lion or 10.6.8? if Lion use the Recovery Mode. If not boot from another drive with a reliable system on it and perform maintenance and repairs.

You aren't running and can't 10.8.4 so any drive is fine including 4TB and WD and vendors cannot afford to have to deal with "will this or won't it work in the millions of computers with SATA II"

Isolating the system and data and user even are good strategy and good for performance. And $89-96 for 1TB boot drive or SSD. SSD hands down. Works fine on SATA II ports (and you have 6, those two ODD ports).