Q: External hard drive is backing up extremely slowly
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by Eric Root,HelpfulMar 18, 2016 8:46 AM
Eric Root
Mar 18, 2016 8:46 AM
in response to LighthouseLearningSolutions
Level 9
(70,250 points)
iTunesLook at the hard drive in the Finder Sidebar and see if a new Time Machine file has been created on the drive. If so, I'd let the backup run. Since you reformatted the drive, Time Machine needs to do a complete backup of the computer. Initial estimates of time remaining are usually highly inaccurate. Once the initial backup is completed, backups will run much faster. See questions 7 and 29 in the article below.
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Mar 18, 2016 8:48 AMby LighthouseLearningSolutions,Thanks, but after running all night, it's still at at about 40 days for 1.4 GB of 73.45 GB. It seems to be going much slower than expected.
I looked at the website you linked and it was helpful in explaining what might be going on. This page says that we should be getting around 40 GB an hour for upload to the drive.
I'm going to try to resetting in Safe Mode to see if this helps.
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by Eric Root,Mar 18, 2016 9:32 AM
Eric Root
Mar 18, 2016 9:32 AM
in response to LighthouseLearningSolutions
Level 9
(70,250 points)
iTunes
You are welcome. Please post back with the results of what you try.
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by LighthouseLearningSolutions,Mar 23, 2016 9:33 AM
LighthouseLearningSolutions
Mar 23, 2016 9:33 AM
in response to LighthouseLearningSolutions
Level 1
(0 points)
I had trouble understanding how to start in Safe Mode. Can you explain it to me?
In the meantime, I installed the new OS, El Capitan. We're still having problems with Time Machine and the external drive.
Every day, the computer says that the external drive is set to read-only so it can't back up to it. But when I look up the information for the drive, it is set to read and write. If I run Disk Utility to check the drive, it fixes the issues and we can start backing up Time Machine to it. But it's still backing up very slowly. It backs up about 30 MB and we have 76 GB to back up.
I'll try figuring out how to start in Safe Mode and see if I can run Disk Utility there. But what else should we do? Maybe it's time to get another external drive?
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by Eric Root,Mar 24, 2016 8:56 AM
Eric Root
Mar 24, 2016 8:56 AM
in response to LighthouseLearningSolutions
Level 9
(70,250 points)
iTunes
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Mar 28, 2016 4:42 PMby LighthouseLearningSolutions,When I run First Aid on the drive, I can then write to the disk and back up with Time Machine. But the computer is very slow to back up the drive and it ends up being turned off by the end of the day with only about 375 MB backed up out of our 76 GB. The next day I either need to restart the backup or I need to run First Aid again because the computer is telling me that the disk is in read-only mode.
PS- I was able to figure out how to boot into safe mode and I formatted the drive.
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by Eric Root,Mar 29, 2016 9:00 AM
Eric Root
Mar 29, 2016 9:00 AM
in response to LighthouseLearningSolutions
Level 9
(70,250 points)
iTunes
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by Eric Root,Apr 1, 2016 9:02 AM
Eric Root
Apr 1, 2016 9:02 AM
in response to LighthouseLearningSolutions
Level 9
(70,250 points)
iTunes
Is the external drive still showing in System Preferences/Time Machine? Try restarting the computer and see if a new .plist is generated in the hard drive level Library.