Speeding up Time Machine

[dukeofism]

I'm backing up my HD to a new external hard drive using time machine for the first time. It is going painfully slow. DOes anyone know how I can speed it up?

 

[Tumbleweed666]

I'm backing up my HD to a new external hard drive using time machine for the first time. It is going painfully slow. DOes anyone know how I can speed it up?

First of all, how slow is 'painfully slow' and second, just leave it going overnight, whats the rush, are you waiting to catch a flight or something?

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

If you use a different interface (non-USB) like eSATA or FireWire, Time Machine would be very fast. I'm assuming you are using USB, which is why it's slow.

 

[r.j.s]

The first time is always slow, as it has to backup everything ... it will be faster after this one.

 

[Nocturnal22]

yup if your using usb its pretty slow if it was firewire it would be way quicker

 

[spillproof]

First make sure your flux capacitor is working properly then plug in your firewire cable and accelerated your desk to 88 miles per hour. Then turn on Time Machine. Be careful though, the speed may give you whiplash.

 

[dukeofism]

the external HD I was using only came with a USB interface, so firewire was not an potion. I searched some on the internet and come upon a tip to go into spotlight and remove the external drive from indexing by spotlight. This sped up the backup process. Originally it took about 30 minutes to backup 2GB. After removing the HD from spotlight, it took 2 hours to backup the final 70GB.

Thanks for all your replies

 

[J the Ninja]

the external HD I was using only came with a USB interface, so firewire was not an potion. I searched some on the internet and come upon a tip to go into spotlight and remove the external drive from indexing by spotlight. This sped up the backup process. Originally it took about 30 minutes to backup 2GB. After removing the HD from spotlight, it took 2 hours to backup the final 70GB.

Thanks for all your replies

Just as a warning, this will prevent you from being able to "Spotlight back in time".

 

[miles01110]

If you use a different interface (non-USB) like eSATA or FireWire, Time Machine would be very fast. I'm assuming you are using USB, which is why it's slow.

yup if your using usb its pretty slow if it was firewire it would be way quicker

Not really. The first TM backup takes a long time because it has to index everything, not because it takes a long time to write the data to disc.

 

[r.j.s]

Not really. The first TM backup takes a long time because it has to index everything, not because it takes a long time to write the data to disc.

It's a combination of both, even if it didn't have to index, it still has to copy the entire drive.

 

[inmotion]

SL + FW800 + 9 GIG BACKUP = "are there yet?????"

i dont remember leopard taking so freaking long!