Time Machine backup taking 68 years :-)

Perfectly normal Hard disk. Almost new. Works fine. GUID partition. By the time it creates backup I don't know whether my Macbook or hard drive will exist
I thought I'll share.

Do I assume this "almost new" disk is in an external drive? Firewire (800) or USB2, either one, with that much stuff, yup, it's going to take a long time!
FWIW, if it is an external drive, and you have the choice of firewire 800 and USB2, always use the firewire. It's no speed daemon but at least it's faster than USB2.

Similar Messages

Time Machine Backups Taking 20 Minutes

Hi everyone.
Starting yesterday, my time machine backups are taking 20 minutes, when they used to only take 5. I'm backing up to an AirPort Extreme, via a wireless home network. Here's the latest code from the Console.
3/10/12 10:26:11.581 AM com.apple.backupd: Starting standard backup
3/10/12 10:26:11.600 AM com.apple.backupd: Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://Michael%20Payne@Extreme%20Pleasantville._afpovertcp._tcp.local/Time%20Mac hine%20Backups
3/10/12 10:26:20.103 AM com.apple.backupd: Mounted network destination at mountpoint: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups using URL: afp://Michael%20Payne@Extreme%20Pleasantville._afpovertcp._tcp.local/Time%20Mac hine%20Backups
3/10/12 10:26:25.308 AM com.apple.backupd: QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
3/10/12 10:26:28.358 AM com.apple.backupd: Disk image /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Michael’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups 1
3/10/12 10:26:28.366 AM com.apple.backupd: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups 1/Backups.backupdb
3/10/12 10:29:15.785 AM com.apple.backupd: 328.7 MB required (including padding), 11.01 GB available
3/10/12 10:29:15.786 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
3/10/12 10:30:15.939 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
3/10/12 10:31:16.045 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
3/10/12 10:32:16.319 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
3/10/12 10:33:25.124 AM com.apple.backupd: Copied 2103 files (4.0 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
3/10/12 10:33:25.490 AM com.apple.backupd: 326.2 MB required (including padding), 11.01 GB available
3/10/12 10:33:25.491 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
3/10/12 10:34:27.545 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
3/10/12 10:35:28.849 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
3/10/12 10:36:30.823 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
3/10/12 10:37:32.956 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
3/10/12 10:38:34.958 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
3/10/12 10:39:36.563 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
3/10/12 10:40:37.309 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
3/10/12 10:41:38.786 AM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
3/10/12 10:42:57.782 AM com.apple.backupd: Copied 740 files (1.3 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
3/10/12 10:43:02.358 AM com.apple.backupd: Starting post-backup thinning
3/10/12 10:44:05.835 AM com.apple.backupd: Deleted /Volumes/Time Machine Backups 1/Backups.backupdb/Michael’s MacBook Pro/2012-03-08-223328 (1.8 MB)
3/10/12 10:44:05.835 AM com.apple.backupd: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
3/10/12 10:44:06.002 AM com.apple.backupd: Backup completed successfully.
3/10/12 10:44:21.968 AM com.apple.backupd: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
3/10/12 10:44:22.204 AM com.apple.backupd: Ejected Time Machine network volume.
It looks like it's a problem with the Indexing. I'm in the process of doing a verification now, but is there anything else I can do to get it back to the 5 minutes or so it takes? If you care, here is a code from a more successful backup that didn't take nearly as long.
3/8/12 10:27:07.728 PM com.apple.backupd: Starting standard backup
3/8/12 10:27:08.081 PM com.apple.backupd: Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://Michael%20Payne@Extreme%20Pleasantville._afpovertcp._tcp.local/Time%20Mac hine%20Backups
3/8/12 10:27:08.643 PM com.apple.backupd: Mounted network destination at mountpoint: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups using URL: afp://Michael%20Payne@Extreme%20Pleasantville._afpovertcp._tcp.local/Time%20Mac hine%20Backups
3/8/12 10:27:15.446 PM com.apple.backupd: QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
3/8/12 10:27:19.348 PM com.apple.backupd: Disk image /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Michael’s MacBook Pro.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups 1
3/8/12 10:27:19.480 PM com.apple.backupd: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups 1/Backups.backupdb
3/8/12 10:29:02.025 PM com.apple.backupd: 435.2 MB required (including padding), 19.03 GB available
3/8/12 10:31:53.585 PM com.apple.backupd: Copied 1312 files (1.4 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
3/8/12 10:32:06.643 PM com.apple.backupd: 434.6 MB required (including padding), 19.03 GB available
3/8/12 10:33:28.056 PM com.apple.backupd: Copied 983 files (943 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
3/8/12 10:33:33.364 PM com.apple.backupd: Starting post-backup thinning
3/8/12 10:35:09.074 PM com.apple.backupd: Deleted /Volumes/Time Machine Backups 1/Backups.backupdb/Michael’s MacBook Pro/2012-03-07-213931 (2.9 MB)
3/8/12 10:35:09.074 PM com.apple.backupd: Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
3/8/12 10:35:09.363 PM com.apple.backupd: Backup completed successfully.
3/8/12 10:35:27.460 PM com.apple.backupd: Ejected Time Machine disk image.
3/8/12 10:35:27.698 PM com.apple.backupd: Ejected Time Machine network volume.
It looks like starting on March 9 is when the problem started happening. I'm using a MacBook Pro with Mac OS X Version 10.7.3.

As an update, the Backup Verification passed.
3/10/12 10:56:09.005 AM com.apple.backupd: Backup verification requested by user.
3/10/12 10:56:09.024 AM com.apple.backupd: Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://Michael%20Payne@Extreme%20Pleasantville._afpovertcp._tcp.local/Time%20Mac hine%20Backups
3/10/12 10:56:09.715 AM com.apple.backupd: Mounted network destination at mountpoint: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups using URL: afp://Michael%20Payne@Extreme%20Pleasantville._afpovertcp._tcp.local/Time%20Mac hine%20Backups
3/10/12 10:56:10.225 AM com.apple.backupd: Running backup verification
3/10/12 10:56:13.381 AM com.apple.backupd: QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
3/10/12 11:07:43.912 AM com.apple.backupd: Backup verification passed!
3/10/12 11:07:44.483 AM com.apple.backupd: Ejected Time Machine network volume.

Time Machine backup taking forever after 10.6.2

After installing 10.6.2, Time Machine is taking ages to back up 3.2GB to my USB external drive. It is taking so long, in fact, that it has not done a single backup since I installed the latest update on November 9 — my computer did not stay up and on long enough for it to complete one back up. Today, it has been running non-stop for some ten hours and has so far done 104 MB of the 3.2GB. This is crazy. It did happen in the past that backups took a long time after a major update, but never this long.
Everything worked fine before the 10.6.2 update. Is anyone else having similar problems?

Ok, so here’s what happened since the last post.
I did what you recommended: had the external hard drive “repaired” (the disk utility said it was ok), and started the backup again, and again it was excruciatingly slow (it had backed up 40MB after five hours or so).
At that point I decided to erase the backup volume and start anew (after formatting etc). But again it got stuck after backing up 3.5GB out of 180GB. The Time Machine widget said “Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed” and “Waiting for index to be ready”. I again stopped the backup and did what your guide recommended. I excluded the backup volume from Spotlight and restarted the process. This time it worked. The backup was complete in reasonable time and has been working fine since.
The only problem is Spotlight. After the backup, I removed the Time Machine volume from the “do not index list”, but Spotlight does not seem to have responded. It either has not indexed the backup volume or is not admitting it: searching for anything inside Time Machine always returns “no results”.
Thanx a lot for your help. If you can give me a hint on how to get Spotlight working again, I’d be really, really grateful.

Why is my Time Machine Backup Taking More Space then my Hard Drive?

I have a Late-2009 MacBook model with a 250GB hard drive. My external drive is 1TB. I use it for Time Machine backups as well as other storage. My backups on that drive are a bit less then 900GB, which is 90% of that disk. My hard drive is only 250GB so how is it over 3 times as large? I would like to have more storage for other files. What would you recomend doing? Can I partition the external disk?

How time machine works is that it makes an initial back up and from there it scans your system for changes. When it finds a change it adds the changes on top of your current backup. So if you have a folder full of pictures then rename them or change them, etc it'll resave/archive the pictures ontop of what it already backed up. It doesn't keep a single "state" of backup. This allows you to "look back in time" and see if you can find something you might have accidentally changed or deleted or etc. Once the disk becomes full it will delete the oldest backups to keep archiving newer files.
I would suggest that you partition your external drive to a size that allows you to keep free the desired extra storage space you're looking to use. For example partition the drive to two 500GB partitions one for storage one for time machine.

Time Machine backups taking extremely long time and disrupting other computing activity

I have an iMac running the latest version of Lion (10.7.4) and which I have upgraded to a one terabyte hard drive and full memory capability. I back up to a My Book 2 terabyte external hard drive using Time Machine. My iMac is often very sticky, though I've done most of the diagnostics I know of and preferences etc. are seemingly all OK and fcuk -fs gives a positive result! The Mac is often hard to wake from sleep and in particular seems to spend a lot of time backing up very-very slowly, with the result that it frustratingly seems to be backing up most of the time with the consequent effercts on using other programmes. Also the whole thing seems to grind to a halt after a hard days work with quite a few applications open. I'm wondering what can be causing this and what I can do to overcome this very frustrating and debilitating problem?

Hi
I would try the following for now and I am sorry, yes you were clear that it's an external drive.
Rebuild Spotlight
-Rebuild the spotlight index as per http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409 as a first step. Spotlight indexes play a role in healthy backups so this is why this could be a good thing to do.
- When conducting the next backup, after the spotlight re-index, consider connecting to your mac only the external hard drive and disconnect all other devices to rule out other devices affecting things. I suggest connecting devices back one at a time followed by a triggered backup until the issue fails to reproduce itself.
General Performance Issues
- Some performance issues can also be cured through an SMC reset. This article can help in this regard, note that the steps differ depending on the model mac you use: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
--In terms of the mac's general sluggishness
- SMC can help
- open Activity Monitor and check to see if CPU usage is abnormally high or any particular process is consuming an elevated amount of CPU cycles, see http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5146
Check External HD (backup drive)
- If you've run disk utility and have done a repair permissions and repair disk as per user "Radiation Mac" then there is no point doing it again but this should just be a reminder incase you missed it.
-- on a related note to disk utility try;
1) Mount your external hard drive.
2) In Disk Utility, locate your external backup drive. Your backup drive should mount in the Disk Utility sidebar when attached to your Mac.
3) Select your external backup drive.
4) Click Repair.
Test Time Machine backups against a different drive
--If you have a spare hard drive or even a small USB stick, you could back up only a very small amount of data to this second hard drive or USB stick as a test. This article outlines how to exclude from backups, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
Further Ideas
Seeing the logs would be useful if the issue persists. There maybe a reason for the issue but it appears only in the logs which we may eventually need.
I almost forgot
-make sure everything is uptodate with Apple software/firmware and any firmware for your drive if applicable.
If anything is unclear, feel free to let me know, I will provide more details.

Initial Time Machine Backup Taking Too Long

I have 184 GB of data to backup. Time Machine is backing up about 1 MB of data every 30 secs. At that rate, it will take 64 days for the initial full backup to complete. That can't be right. Has anyone run into similar problems? Any advice?
Thanks...

ixian98 wrote:
That can't be right. Has anyone run into similar problems? Any advice?
Hi check out [this thread|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1712437&tstart=0] which explains how best to format a disk for TM use.

Time Machine backup taking too long (91 days)

I'm doing the initial TM backup to a partitioned EHD... TM has been running for 3 hours and it has made almost no progress. It even has the estimated time as 91 days (!!!) to complete the backup. Is this normal? The very first time I did TM (on another drive) I remember it took a while but surely not 91 days. Am I doing something wrong? Or do I just need to wait it out and let this take its sweet time?

Hello Jossydtaylor
Check out the article below to see if you match any of the criteria for Times Machine running slow. There are also some other link by the related articles that may provide more assistance as well.
OS X Mountain Lion: If Time Machine is slow
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11172
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Regards,
-Norm G.

HT201250 Is my first time machine backup taking too long?

I'm running my first ever back up to Time Machine which was set up for me in the apple store yesterday. It's been going for around 20 hours and has only done 11.3 GB of the 112GB it needs to do. Is it normal for it to take this long?
Any help much appreciated.

Have now stopped and restarted and it's complete.

First Time Machine Backup Taking Forever

I'm backing up my Mac for the first time using a WD My Passport Ultra. When I initially tried to back it up, it had finished like 1GB in like 2 hours, so I restarted my computer to try it again. Once I started the backup again, it started off much faster, about 2.5GB in 15 minutes, and it gave me an estimate of 11 hours to complete, so I left it overnight to finish, but after 12 hours, I woke up again to find that only 12GB in total had been backed up. Why am I having this problem?
I have also tried backing up using the WD Anywhere Backup software, that runs really well to about 60% or so, before it freezes on one file. Is my backup deffective? I had a similar problem backing up my Mac with another WD backup and this is actually my free replacement, so I'm not sure if like WD is maybe not working with my Mac?

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
In the top right corner of the Console window, there's a search box labeled Filter. Initially the words "String Matching" are shown in that box. Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes.) You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard."
Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Note the timestamp of the last "Starting" message that corresponds to the beginning of an an abnormal backup. Now
CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD
so that all messages are showing, and scroll back in the log to the time you noted. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
☞ If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.
☞ The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
☞ Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Time machine backup taking too long

I am trying to use timemachine to backup on a new 2 tb 'passport for mac' but after running it for 2days it has only backed up 16gb of 290 gb so i have had to stop it. Anyone know how i can speed this up?

That's about two days too many. Have you run Software Update? A fix for Lion's slow TM performance was released a week or so ago.
You really ought to post this question in the iMac (Intel) or OS X Lion discussions area.

Time machine backups take way too long

Greetings,
Having trouble with Time Machine backups taking way too long. (No, it's not the first backup after some momentous event, as 90% of what I read about slow backups mentions; it's _every_ backup.)
20" iMac purchased Oct 2008. OS 10.6.8. 500 GB internal hard drive. 3 TB external backup drive. Was tested at the local "Genius" Bar, but they found nothing wrong with it. The best they could do is to recommend a restore from Time Machine, and if that didn't work, start clean and reload the OS and then copy my stuff back. I don't think so. I actually did a full Time Machine restore for a different reason, and it didn't help (except that I gained a few GB of disk space!).
My Time Machine backups now take about 39 minutes to complete. I have a 500 GB internal drive and this problem happens regardless of which external drive I use. (I have 3: 2 WD hard drives and one [noisy!] G-drive.) My current backup drive is a 3 TB WD drive with 2 TB of free space.
These are small incremental backups, typically about 35 MB. It doesn't take half an hour to copy 35 MB!
All phases take a long time, but the most irritating one is where TM appears to get stuck for a long time at the beginning and end of the copying phase. For example, at one point it will say something along the lines of Backing Up 7 KB of 34.4 MB. And it'll be like that for minutes on end. Later it will say something like 35 MB of 35 MB and hang there for minutes on end. During these periods the write I/O rate will go up and down, and CPU usage will often be very high (with backupd using 90 - 100%, in addition to highly elevated System CPU usage). In one particular backup the I/O write rate for one part of it looked like a heartbeat on an EKG! I should have taken a screenshot.
At the beginning during the Calculating Changes phase, backupd is using between 90 and 100% CPU.
There is also high CPU usage during the next phase, Preparing. And the number of items being prepared is in the thousands.
It always goes in two rounds because it finds that the root directory (/) has been modified.
I've Googled and searched Mac forums and found nothing useful. I started with a new .plist file and nothing's changed.
Can anyone help? Thanks!
I wrote the above Jun 28. Yeah, finally getting around to posting it. Since then it's gotten worse. I now do a manual backup once a day and it takes almost an hour. I tried re-indexing Spotlight. No good.
Can anyone help? Again, this is not a "first backup." It is _every_ backup.
Thanks!
AEF

Thanks for your efforts. Here are my answers, comments, and further info:
I believe I have repaired permissions on my drive as part of my troubleshooting. And I'm sure I checked SMART status, which came up with a thumbs up, so to speak. I'm trying again. I don't see any useful messages in any logs on the console. I'm looking at "All Messages" and there is so far nothing useful. Oh, I think you must mean repair as in "Repair Disk," not "Repair Disk Permissions." I believe the "genius" at the Apple store did that or something just as good. The machine checked out fine according to them.
Checked SMART status just now: passed. Ran Quick Drive Test: also passed.
Oh, I installed "Time Machine Buddy". Occasionally, and only occasionally, I get a "deep traversal needed message" like this (I copied this from .Backup.log):
Running preflight for "Macintosh HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: BF606E9A-5FD0-3B92-8D76-33DC63E7B2B1 eventDBUUID: 30DD929D-8982-46C2-BAE6-F0BD1E73916A)
        Scanning nodes needing deep traversal
        Node requires deep traversal: /Users/alanfeldman/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Database/apdb reason:contains changes|must scan subdirs|fsevent|missed reservation|
        Calculating size of changes
        Should copy 2919 items (27.8 MB) representing 7116 blocks of size 4096. 546805181 blocks available.
Preflight complete for "Macintosh HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: BF606E9A-5FD0-3B92-8D76-33DC63E7B2B1 eventDBUUID: 30DD929D-8982-46C2-BAE6-F0BD1E73916A)
Time elapsed: 1 minute, 39.000 seconds
But the vast majority of the time I do NOT get this message. But if there's something wrong with this apdb file, what can I do to fix it?
Note that there is usually, if not always, a lot of CPU activity or I/O (disk) activity, but not a lot getting done.

I am running my first time machine backup onto a Western Digital MyBook Live. It is taking forever. Is there antivirus software running in the background or any other settings I need to change to speed it up? Also I am on a wireless network.

I am running my first time machine backup onto a Western Digital MyBook Live. It is taking forever. Is there antivirus software running in the background or any other settings I need to change to speed it up? Also I am on a wireless network.

The initial Time Machine backup can certainly take a long time over wireless. Days, possibly. It's impossible for anyone here to be able to predict how long it will take, and wireless environmental conditions can change at any time.
Is there antivirus software running in the background
Only you can determine that. If you're using third party AV software, anything is possible.
NAS devices may not be compatible with Time Machine, regardless of what their manufacturers may claim. Even after the Time Machine backup completes, your backup may be unreliable. You may not discover that until you need to rely upon the backup for some reason, and corruption can occur months or years from now.
Time Machine supports the following backup configurations:
A locally mounted volume
Time Capsule
A volume resident on a USB hard disk connected directly to a Time Capsule or current production AirPort Extreme Base Station.
That's it. Any configuration other than the above list places you in an experimental category. If your backup fails, you're on your own.

Doing a first time machine backup with OS X 10.8.3. Taking For Ever. Have a 24g flash drive and only 21 g to back up. What to do?

This is a brand new MacBook Pro. This would be the first time machine backup being done on it. Is that why it is too slow?

Note that a 24 GB flash drive is completely inadequate to use effectively with Time Machine. It will probably run out of space very quickly. You want at least 2-3 times more space on your backup drive than what you are backing up. Or you want to choose some other backup app that does not do incremental backups.
Get yourself a good hard drive. 200 GB would be cheap and would give you more than enough space to store many months (maybe years) of backups, unless what is being backed up grows significantly.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go

I have a mid2009 MacBook Pro for which I have been using a USB WD HD for Time Machine. I'd like to get a wireless HD and start a new Time Machine backup for this Mac and retire the 5 year old WD drive. Can I start over?

I have a mid2009 MacBook Pro running Mavericks for which I have been using a USB WD HD for Time Machine. I'd like to get a wireless HD and start a new Time Machine backup for this Mac and retire the 5 year old WD drive. Can I start over?

no archive/ backup is perfect, HD clones can be set to make incremental additions, same as time machine however, though they are more time involved in doing so.
See the + and - of all data backup/ archives below and "spread it around".... or the "dont put your eggs all in one basket" philosophy.
Peace
Data Storage Platforms; their Drawbacks & Advantages
#1. Time Machine / Time Capsule
Drawbacks:
1. Time Machine is not bootable, if your internal drive fails, you cannot access files or boot from TM directly from the dead computer.
2. Time machine is controlled by complex software, and while you can delve into the TM backup database for specific file(s) extraction, this is not ideal or desirable.
3. Time machine can and does have the potential for many error codes in which data corruption can occur and your important backup files may not be saved correctly, at all, or even damaged. This extra link of failure in placing software between your data and its recovery is a point of risk and failure. A HD clone is not subject to these errors.
4. Time machine mirrors your internal HD, in which cases of data corruption, this corruption can immediately spread to the backup as the two are linked. TM is perpetually connected (or often) to your computer, and corruption spread to corruption, without isolation, which TM lacks (usually), migrating errors or corruption is either automatic or extremely easy to unwittingly do.
5. Time Machine does not keep endless copies of changed or deleted data, and you are often not notified when it deletes them; likewise you may accidently delete files off your computer and this accident is mirrored on TM.
6. Restoring from TM is quite time intensive.
7. TM is a backup and not a data archive, and therefore by definition a low-level security of vital/important data.
8. TM working premise is a “black box” backup of OS, APPS, settings, and vital data that nearly 100% of users never verify until an emergency hits or their computers internal SSD or HD that is corrupt or dead and this is an extremely bad working premise on vital data.
9. Given that data created and stored is growing exponentially, the fact that TM operates as a “store-it-all” backup nexus makes TM inherently incapable to easily backup massive amounts of data, nor is doing so a good idea.
10. TM working premise is a backup of a users system and active working data, and NOT massive amounts of static data, yet most users never take this into consideration, making TM a high-risk locus of data “bloat”.
11. In the case of Time Capsule, wifi data storage is a less than ideal premise given possible wireless data corruption.
12. TM like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.
13. *Level-1 security of your vital data.
Advantages:
1. TM is very easy to use either in automatic mode or in 1-click backups.
2. TM is a perfect novice level simplex backup single-layer security save against internal HD failure or corruption.
3. TM can easily provide a seamless no-gap policy of active data that is often not easily capable in HD clones or HD archives (only if the user is lazy is making data saves).
#2. HD archives
Drawbacks:
1. Like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.
2. Unless the user ritually copies working active data to HD external archives, then there is a time-gap of potential missing data; as such users must be proactive in archiving data that is being worked on or recently saved or created.
Advantages:
1. Fills the gap left in a week or 2-week-old HD clone, as an example.
2. Simplex no-software data storage that is isolated and autonomous from the computer (in most cases).
3. HD archives are the best idealized storage source for storing huge and multi-terabytes of data.
4. Best-idealized 1st platform redundancy for data protection.
5. *Perfect primary tier and level-2 security of your vital data.
#3. HD clones (see below for full advantages / drawbacks)
Drawbacks:
1. HD clones can be incrementally updated to hourly or daily, however this is time consuming and HD clones are, often, a week or more old, in which case data between today and the most fresh HD clone can and would be lost (however this gap is filled by use of HD archives listed above or by a TM backup).
2. Like all HD-based data is subject to ferromagnetic and mechanical failure.
Advantages:
1. HD clones are the best, quickest way to get back to 100% full operation in mere seconds.
2. Once a HD clone is created, the creation software (Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper) is no longer needed whatsoever, and unlike TM, which requires complex software for its operational transference of data, a HD clone is its own bootable entity.
3. HD clones are unconnected and isolated from recent corruption.
4. HD clones allow a “portable copy” of your computer that you can likewise connect to another same Mac and have all your APPS and data at hand, which is extremely useful.
5. Rather than, as many users do, thinking of a HD clone as a “complimentary backup” to the use of TM, a HD clone is superior to TM both in ease of returning to 100% quickly, and its autonomous nature; while each has its place, TM can and does fill the gap in, say, a 2 week old clone. As an analogy, the HD clone itself is the brick wall of protection, whereas TM can be thought of as the mortar, which will fill any cracks in data on a week, 2-week, or 1-month old HD clone.
6. Best-idealized 2nd platform redundancy for data protection, and 1st level for system restore of your computers internal HD. (Time machine being 2nd level for system restore of the computer’s internal HD).
7. *Level-2 security of your vital data.
HD cloning software options:
1. SuperDuper HD cloning software APP (free)
2. Carbon Copy Cloner APP (will copy the recovery partition as well)
3. Disk utility HD bootable clone.
#4. Online archives
Drawbacks:
1. Subject to server failure or due to non-payment of your hosting account, it can be suspended.
2. Subject, due to lack of security on your part, to being attacked and hacked/erased.
Advantages:
1. In case of house fire, etc. your data is safe.
2. In travels, and propagating files to friends and likewise, a mere link by email is all that is needed and no large media needs to be sent across the net.
3. Online archives are the perfect and best-idealized 3rd platform redundancy for data protection.
4. Supremely useful in data isolation from backups and local archives in being online and offsite for long-distance security in isolation.
5. *Level-1.5 security of your vital data.
#5. DVD professional archival media
Drawbacks:
1. DVD single-layer disks are limited to 4.7Gigabytes of data.
2. DVD media are, given rough handling, prone to scratches and light-degradation if not stored correctly.
Advantages:
1. Archival DVD professional blank media is rated for in excess of 100+ years.
2. DVD is not subject to mechanical breakdown.
3. DVD archival media is not subject to ferromagnetic degradation.
4. DVD archival media correctly sleeved and stored is currently a supreme storage method of archiving vital data.
5. DVD media is once written and therefore free of data corruption if the write is correct.
6. DVD media is the perfect ideal for “freezing” and isolating old copies of data for reference in case newer generations of data become corrupted and an older copy is needed to revert to.
7. Best-idealized 4th platform redundancy for data protection.
8. *Level-3 (highest) security of your vital data.
[*Level-4 data security under development as once-written metallic plates and synthetic sapphire and likewise ultra-long-term data storage]
#6. Cloud based storage
Drawbacks:
1. Cloud storage can only be quasi-possessed.
2. No genuine true security and privacy of data.
3. Should never be considered for vital data storage or especially long-term.
4. *Level-0 security of your vital data.
Advantages:
1. Quick, easy and cheap storage location for simplex files for transfer to keep on hand and yet off the computer.
2. Easy source for small-file data sharing.

Time Machine Backup now taking excessive time.

My time machine backup from my 13in MacBook Pro to my 2TB time capsule is now taking an excessive time. I left it on all evening and all night from 6 pm. At 7am it said it has backed up 3 gb of 28 gb.
I ran a verify disk using Disk Utility. It took 6 hours to complete and found no errors.
A time machine backup to a second drive took 6 hours to complete for the first time.
Any clues as to the issue.

Good idea about the file copy. Will get back with further details.
Yes am using Yosemite and yes am connected via Ethernet. Have also turned off wireless on the MacbookPro to ensure traffic is only via Ethernet and shutdown all other programs ie a time machine backup was the only activity. Also ASUS router traffic analyser showed no significant external upload or download activity.
Last backup was about 8 April. For some reason I associate that with a recent update.

Time Machine backup taking 68 years :-)

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