Why is my small backup taking so long?

1. Why doesn't it back up more often? It says the last previous backup was April 2nd, isn't it supposed to backup hourly.

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By default it should backup every hour. If you have not changed anything and it isn't, hmmm. Here is an Application that lets you change the intervals that it backs up. You could use it to reset the backup times.

http://macapper.com/2007/12/12/video-review-timemachinesheduler/

It is taking half an hour, why?

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Because you are PROBABLY hooked up to an external hard drive with UBS 2. It is not ethernet 10/100 or Gigabyte speed. It should be faster if the hard drive was and internal second hard drive back-up. If it is an internal extra hard drive it should be faster.

macsrules said:

Because you are PROBABLY hooked up to an external hard drive with UBS 2. It is not ethernet 10/100 or Gigabyte speed. It should be faster if the hard drive was and internal second hard drive back-up. If it is an internal extra hard drive it should be faster.

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USB is much faster then 10/100 ethernet. His backup is probably taking long because it hasn't run in a couple of weeks and may be large. This may also be why the backups are failing. When the backup is running, click the TM icon in the top bar to see how big the back is. If the backups are very large, you may want to find out what is changing on your machine and exclude some of the fluctuating folders. For example, I exempt a folder that I use for scratch space while encoding DVD's

ethernet 10: 1MB/Sec
ethernet 100: 9MB/Sec
USB2: 15-20MB/Sec (typical real-world speed)
FW400: 25-30MB/Sec (typical real-world speed)
FW800: 50-60MB/Sec (typical real-world speed)
ethernet 1000: 90MB/Sec (limited by the physical disk)
SATA2: 375MB/Sec (limited by the physical disk)


*The ethernet values are assuming a realistic 70%-80% saturation
**typical consumer HDDs are well under 50MB/Sec for sustained writes

Another thing to consider, if it's the MacBook that's having these issues, make sure it's plugged in to a power source or it won't back up every hour. Also, people have reported having problems with antivirus programs and backing up. Disable the antivirus program and the backup will run much smoother.

err404,


That might be so, but when I am copying something to my internal hard drive it sure seems like it moves faster than when I have my external seagate hooked up and am copying the same files. Even ethernet seems like it is faster.

macsrules said:

That might be so, but when I am copying something to my internal hard drive it sure seems like it moves faster than when I have my external seagate hooked up and am copying the same files. Even ethernet seems like it is faster.

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That sounds about right. The internal interface is much faster then the physical drive. Gigabit ethernet is also faster then most drives. While USB2.0 will be a bottleneck for a good drive.
I was just pointing out the USB is better the 10/100 ethernet. And if you go wireless, you'll have even worse performance.

But to keep this all in perspective, in a 1/2 hour, an average USB 2.0 external disk should be able to transfer more than 30GB of data. If his backup is that large, frankly something is wrong.