Very slow Time Machine back up to new hard drive?

[Baxterae]

Hi,

I just purchased a new external hard drive (G-drive 4TB Desktop drive) to back up my 2014 MacBook Pro Retina, running OS X Yosemite. I started the initial back up roughly 6 hours ago and it has transferred a total of 8GB (from 490GB). Transfer is through USB 3.0. It's a completely new disk so the full 4TB is available. I am aware that it's a large transfer, but it seems to be exceptionally slow.

Is this very slow speed for an initial large back up normal? I have been using TimeMachine for years and the transfer rate has previously been much faster (although this was for the incremental backups).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[satcomer]

The first backup is Very large! This should be done to a device itself wired. Then transfer to wireless and the small changes will go quickly!

 

[Baxterae]

The first backup is Very large! This should be done to a device itself wired. Then transfer to wireless and the small changes will go quickly!

Thanks for the reply, but I'm afraid I don't follow... The backup is being done wired, over a USB 3.0 connection (not wireless) and is still this slow! Unless I have misunderstood your comment?

 

[satcomer]

Thanks for the reply, but I'm afraid I don't follow... The backup is being done wired, over a USB 3.0 connection (not wireless) and is still this slow! Unless I have misunderstood your comment?

Like I said before very first Time Machine back is the WHOLE OS X and make the cool Time Machine effect when in use! So the very first backup is HUGE and needs to run over night. After that Time Machine will only backup changed files that run quickly!

 

[JohnDS]

It shouldn't be that slow. Are you using anti-virus software? If so, turn it off. Also go to the Spotlight preferences pane and add the external drive as an excluded drive so the Mac is not trying to index and backup at the same time.
[doublepost=1473901310][/doublepost]If that doesn't fix it, you should run Verify Disk from disk utility on both the external and internal drives.

 

[sit-tight]

Been awhile since I set up a Time Machine drive but wonder if you selected to have the drive encrypted. That might be adding more time to the task. Just a thought.

 

[grahamperrin]

Please launch Terminal, run the following one line command and then share the output with us.

uptime ; sw_vers; diskutil list ; hdiutil info

Hint: when you paste, use the forum option to insert code.