Leopard seems quick, but Time Machine is slowwwww

[sekker]

Just put Leopard on this 1st Gen MBP. Seems very snappy - Safari is amazing so far.

However, I've now twice set up time machine to backup overnight, and it has only gotten thru about 30GB max of my files copied over. I realize I should be able to clean out my stuff, but this is ridiculous! My laptop NEVER stays in one place more than 12 hours at a time.

I was concerned this would be a problem, so I did not try this with a USB 2 drive. This is with a 250GB powered external FW drive - the same drive I can make a disk copy with disk utility or CCC in a few hours (less than 3).

So what gives with Time Machine? How long is it taking you to get yours set up?

[onthedownlow]

It, and any backup program, will always take a long time for the initial backup. The incremental backs (or however you schedule them) will likely take minutes, if that - depending on your workload.

If you are completely backing up the system every night (a complete, full backup...not just incremental), then yes, it will take a long time.

Even though I champion CCC and others like SuperDuper are great, etc...I suppose at least you should have the peace of mind that it is an official Apple software product doing the chore? ; )

[vision63]

I'm about to go through my first Time Machine experience. I've discovered that you can do more than one Mac. So I'll be doing it twice. Good luck.

[STL]

Wow, your TM only got through 30G overnight - that is much slower than my experience.

Hmm, I had 80G backed up by TM to an external USB2 HD. TM started at 10p and was finished when I checked it again at 6a. TM's hourly updates take about 1 minute and do not interfere with my work.

Two points that may be speeding up my TM backups
o I did not start TM until Spotlight was completely finished indexing after a Leopard install.
o I set Spotlight to exclude the TM HD from indexing.

[vision63]

I backed up about 180GB in about 5 hours. Not too too bad. sekker, at least you got it backed up.