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Time Machine -- Now just over 24h of backing up!

M

Milateket

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 29, 2012
13
0
Really?

I know this has been beat to heck. But this is ridiculous. I am into my 24th hour of doing an initial back up of my MacBook Pro.

Early 2011 machine
10.7.5 {edit}
4gb memory
2.3 i5
172gb to back up

WD Essentials
2TB external harddrive
USB2 connection

So, about 6 hours to do back up and I am now into 18 hours of encryption and not 50% finished.

Is this a normal time for a back up?

This has tied my machine up now way too long for my liking... :mad:
 
Last edited:
That does sound a little long, but choosing encryption (which I agree is a good idea) made it even longer.
 
USB 2 is your problem. I backed up my new iMac via ethernet to a time capsule and it took about 1.5 hours. Then did the same using CCC on a USB 2 drive I had. After 23 hours I just quit. Going to look for a cheap USB 3 or Thunderbolt in the next few weeks.
 
Apple fanboy said:
USB 2 is your problem. I backed up my new iMac via ethernet to a time capsule and it took about 1.5 hours. Then did the same using CCC on a USB 2 drive I had. After 23 hours I just quit. Going to look for a cheap USB 3 or Thunderbolt in the next few weeks.
Click to expand...

I just assumed that it was USB2. However the WD EHD does support USB3. The tag attached to the cable says it is a USB3 cable and has the different end on it. I believe I read somewhere that the MBP is USB3 compatible... is this right?

I am more just venting. This day and age backing up should not take 48 hours... because that is what it is looking like time wise.

What are the advantages/disadvantages of using encryption? I plan to back up my wife's MBP when this is done. My data is a little more sensitive than my wife's. My machine has work related material but my wife's machine is just the regular more machine than she needed machine. So I may decide to NOT use encryption on the second MBP. Thoughts... Comments much appreciated!
 
Milateket said:
I just assumed that it was USB2. However the WD EHD does support USB3. The tag attached to the cable says it is a USB3 cable and has the different end on it. I believe I read somewhere that the MBP is USB3 compatible... is this right?
Click to expand...

USB3 wasn't introduced until the 2012 models
 
Even over usb2 a backup of that size should have taken 3 hours at most, with encryption maybe a while longer.

I've seen Time Machine do this before, I'd reformat the drive and start again
 
Milateket said:
What are the advantages/disadvantages of using encryption? I plan to back up my wife's MBP when this is done. My data is a little more sensitive than my wife's. My machine has work related material but my wife's machine is just the regular more machine than she needed machine. So I may decide to NOT use encryption on the second MBP. Thoughts... Comments much appreciated!
Click to expand...

If someone steals your backup drive they cannot access your data. After the initial backup was done, I did not notice any speed hit having encryption on. But it did slow down that first backup.
 
Weaselboy said:
If someone steals your backup drive they cannot access your data. After the initial backup was done, I did not notice any speed hit having encryption on. But it did slow down that first backup.
Click to expand...

As it does the initial encryption Time Machine has been doing the hourly backups and it is very fast when it does do them. I noticed that the encryption process is suspended while the backups are going on. Only a couple of minutes at most for the back from start to finish.

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SprSynJn said:
Wasn't there an update recently with Mac OS that fixed this problem? Was version are you running?
Click to expand...

Running 10.7.5.
 
Paulywauly said:
Even over usb2 a backup of that size should have taken 3 hours at most, with encryption maybe a while longer.

I've seen Time Machine do this before, I'd reformat the drive and start again
Click to expand...

Too much time invested at this point. I will let it run the course -- for spite if anything else. If and when it does finish I will watch to make sure the regular backups are going quick. If not then I will burn the whole damn thing and submit an insurance claim. ;)

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NewbieCanada said:
USB3 wasn't introduced until the 2012 models
Click to expand...

My wife's is a 2012. Maybe I will back hers up with encryption too. Compare the two times.
 
Milateket said:
Too much time invested at this point. I will let it run the course -- for spite if anything else. If and when it does finish I will watch to make sure the regular backups are going quick. If not then I will burn the whole damn thing and submit an insurance claim. ;)[COLOR="#808080"
Click to expand...

Haha fair enough.

If it helps there is a Dashboard widget which shows you what you Time Machine is actually doing. I forget its name but you should have a look for it
 
If encrypting, it encrypts the entire drive. So you're writing 2TB not 170ish GB for the initial setup. At about 30MB/s it would take a bit over 19 hours. Might not hit full speed though, could be slower.

After it just writes what is being backed up, nothing more.
 
bogatyr said:
If encrypting, it encrypts the entire drive. So you're writing 2TB not 170ish GB for the initial setup. At about 30MB/s it would take a bit over 19 hours. Might not hit full speed though, could be slower.

After it just writes what is being backed up, nothing more.
Click to expand...

The entire drive? I did not partition the drive knowing that i was going to be backing up two machines on the same drive. I made the decision not to as to leave #1 machine (mine) priority. So when I back up #2 machine, and if i decide to encrypt that does it re-encrypt the whole drive again? Are you able to explain to me why it encrypts the whole drive?

And thanks to every one who has participated in this discussion with me. I greatly appreciate the input!

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Paulywauly said:
Yup that's the one!
Click to expand...

Fired that puppy up. Just shows the back ups and not the encryption part. The regular back ups are doing fine and are taking under a minute to execute. Thanks for that little tip re widget.
 
UPDATE 31 hours in:

I last looked at my MBP around 2230h and it was 56% done encrypting. Got distracted for a couple of hours. Sat down with my MBP 30 minutes ago to see that Time Machine had been delayed. I do a bit of investigation and it found a message that stated that Time Machine would resume regular back ups when disk was connected. WTF? No icon showing. Opened finder... no EHD showing up. HD had power. USB still connected. Said a few words not worth repeating here.

I turned Time MAchine off. Un plugged the USB Unplugged the EHD. Restarted the MBP. Plugged the EHD back in. Turned Time Machine back on. And holy crap it started up and when I looked to see how far along I was it went back to encrypting and made a 1% gain -- at 57% now.

This whole experience is becoming laughable. An evil genius kind of laughable. But laughable none the less.

Stay tuned...
 
bogatyr said:
If encrypting, it encrypts the entire drive. So you're writing 2TB not 170ish GB for the initial setup. At about 30MB/s it would take a bit over 19 hours. Might not hit full speed though, could be slower.

After it just writes what is being backed up, nothing more.
Click to expand...

It does not encrypt the entire drive. It makes a sparse disk image bundle that is large enough to contain the backup and nothing more. As more files are added the bundle is enlarged. At least that is how it worked on my system.

You might be thinking of Filevault2 on an OS drive, which does encrypt the whole drive.
 
41 hours and at 77%

41 hours and at 77% for encryption. Regular back ups are working great and doing them in under 60 seconds every hour. No disappearing EHD since last night...
 
Milateket said:
41 hours and at 77% for encryption. Regular back ups are working great and doing them in under 60 seconds every hour. No disappearing EHD since last night...
Click to expand...

I have this mental image of you sitting there for hours staring at the progress bar. :D Hang in there!
 
Weaselboy said:
It does not encrypt the entire drive. It makes a sparse disk image bundle that is large enough to contain the backup and nothing more. As more files are added the bundle is enlarged. At least that is how it worked on my system.

You might be thinking of Filevault2 on an OS drive, which does encrypt the whole drive.
Click to expand...

Last time I did it with an external drive, it encrypted the drive. With my time capsule it used a sparse bundle.
 
Finally done...

Final hour count to to initial back up with encryption = 52 HOURS

So no more Time Machine encryption for me...


Thanks to all for the help/support and other stuff. :D

----------
lightz39 said:
So you're telling me not to encrypt my drive then? :p
Click to expand...

See above ^
 
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