No Bootcamp.
I did drop my laptop last week, though. Ever since, it's been making an intermittent clicking sound. That's why I'm backing everything up -- I'm having my internal HD replaced soon. I notice that when the back up is in progress, the clicking is more frequent.
So, normally, I'd chalk up the slow pace to the evidently damaged HD. However, two factors make me doubt this: a lot of other people have experienced extremely slow TM progress, and the HD transfers quite well when I manually drag a few GB worth of files over to the external HD.
That sound from the HDD isn't good after a drop. Neither is it good that you're getting errors during the Time Machine backup. It is quite possible that running Time Machine -or any cloning routine- puts too much strain on the internal disk if that disk was damaged in the fall. Depending on the errors, it is possible that even if the disk survives until the eventual completion of the Time Machine transfer, the resulting Time Machine Data Base will be corrupt and can be nearly useless as a straight back up to do an automatic restore later on.
If your External drive is big enough -to accommodate a large amount of individual files transferred separately as well as a clone or Time Machine back up - I would stop the Time Machine transfer for the time being (Given the amount of data transferred you will loose little but time by halting the process right now). I would first perform a sort of triage. Concentrate on transferring the most vital personal files manually in relatively large chunks in order of priority. Only after the transfer of these irreplaceable personal files has been completed would I attempt another cloning operation or Time Machine back up from that internal drive.
(Straight Cloning seems more logical to me at this point -after saving your personal files- since Time Machine is more for preserving incremental changes to the files over time and you are going to replace the internal drive soon. Cloning can be done with Disk Utility and doesn't require additional software. I would start using Time Machine from scratch after the Mac has a new internal drive and is running smoothly again)
If the disk was damaged the risk is also there that System files are "damaged" or "corrupt". I would not trust a full restoration to a replacement drive based on a Time Machine Back-up or a clone created from a potentially damaged internal drive like that. System files can be recreated from a OS Installation onto the new drive and it seems like a wasted effort -to me- to try to transfer those to the External Drive at this point.
The only reason to perform a clone right now would be to preserve preference / plists / settings etc that are easily overlooked during a manual transfer of files for back up but most of these settings -to me- have lower priority than personal files that can't be replaced even with time consuming re-configuration of Applications. That's why I would go the route outlined above before I'd do a clone or TM backup where you don't have a say on the order of the file transfer and can't set your priorities.
If you have a way to start the Mac from another start-up volume then you could run the "Repair Disk" routine found under "First Aid" in Disk Utility. That repair may improve the internal drives' performance during back up as well. Couldn't hurt to have a hardware check after a machine is dropped. (Cable connections can become loose, RAM modules can get unseated etc)
P.S.
[At the risk of sounding crude, insensitive, sanctimonious and pedantic ... I'm sure the people who advised you above would agree that info about dropping the computer changes things. I'm sure they would have liked to have that info about dropping the Mac in the OP at the start of the thread - as well as more info about the errors you were getting.
Sorry to say that -as you've now no doubt realized - the incremental Time Machine back-ups should have been made prior to the drop. But you're working to get your files to safety now so Good Luck salvaging your files from a drive that could fail catastrophically at any moment. (Best to presume the worst and be wrong about being "over" cautious. IMNHO.)]
