How Long Does Time Machine Take To Prepare Backup? Time Machine Preparing backup and stop? go through the article to answer of all your questions.
Time machine is the best yet excellent tool to backup data on mac. It is simple and easy to use but the question is how long does the time machine take to prepare backup? Why should you use Time Machine? These are a few questions that come to mind of every Mac user.
Through the time machine, you would be able to store a backup of all your Mac’s data on an external drive to save and shift to another mac. Time simple backup tool can automatically backup all files that exist on your mac.
This article is exclusively for those who are facing slow speed issues while their Time Machine preparing backup. Definitely, you are one of them. Worries off, this article is for you if you want to know How Long Does Time Machine Take to Prepare Backup and improve the Time machine backup time.
How long does the time machine take to prepare a backup is dependent on the size of data being backed up. In an ideal win-win situation, the Time machine does not take more than 5-7 minutes. Preparing backup should not take more time, and so is the Time Machine. Generally, it only takes 10 minutes to take a backup of 10GB of data. Means 1 minute for 1 GB is not bad.
How long does the time machine take to prepare backup?
There is a number of factors on which “How long does time machine take to prepare backup depends. We have mentioned them in the below segment one by one. Must go through them.
Size & Count of Files on Primary Storage:
The time taken by Time Machine to complete the backup process is associated with the number of files and their size on the primary storage disk. Do you know how much time does a time machine takes to backup 500GB and 256 GB? It is obvious that the 500 GB will take more time.
The size of the disk does not matter here. The only thing that is important is the size of data placed in the disc which is the core value that must be kept safe. More importantly, the disk containing 1000 files will take more time as compared to the single file equal to the size of 1000 files.
Adjustment of Priority of Backend Process:
The priority setting of the backend process and their adjustment is another factor that hit the Time machine interval. This best backup application is made with the intention to run in the background while taking the backup files coped on your external attached drive. You can perform your work on the laptop while the backup process running in the background.
You should not change this setting like this the only important things that work on the foreground that take the most share of CPU utilization.
Alternative Approach using Additional App:
How long does the time machine take to prepare a backup? The process can be expedited using a user-friendly approach. There was an App named ProcessRanicer a few years back. This provided the users with and user-friendly easy to use interface to get the data files secure. Unfortunately, the application is no more supported by the latest Mac operating system.
However, if you are using an older version of the Operating system on Mac, then this might work for you. The backup process includes the reading of data from one drive and placing it on the other drive. So the speed of the primary drive from where data is being read and the speed of the secondary drive where data is meant to write should be up to the mark to complete the backup process quickly.
When it involves the NAS and AirPort Time Capsule the speed of backup will be based on the speed to network speed. More network speed means more quickly the data is being transferred directionally.
Speed of primary Storage:
Speed of primary storage is one of the main concerns. As the Time Machine would have to read data from the primary drive that is why the better speed here will ultimately end with the fast backup completion.
Primary drive speed is different for different models of Mac. Such as the MacBook Pro is way far faster compared to the MacBook Air. The same is for SSD and HDD. The SSD models are more speed optimistic. Today, the main challenge with mac is its unchangeable drive. You cannot replace the storage drive in new models.
The solution is buying a large disk space. This means you will automatically get higher performance. Like MacBook Air 14 equipped with the 128GB, SSD Drive offers 314 MB per second read speed which is not bad.
Cutting the long story short, the laptop market offers many solutions to upgrade your primary disk drive. There are two market competitors for upgrading your drive by providing multiple storage options one is OWS and the other is Feather. Mentioning for reference, the 512GB expansion by the Feather has increased the reading speed to 3100 MB/s. Shocked!!!
On the other hand the OWS, its larger size 480 GB SSD has significantly increased the speed to 3200 MB/s.
Speed of Secondary Drive (Backup Drive):
The job completion time is taken by the Time machine also depends on the backup drive. If it will be of fast speed then definitely the Time Machine will prepare backup more quickly. The more your pay the more value you get. Time Machine can also get the backup on a flash drive and on a cheap external hard drive too.
But the difference is the time taken. For example, if a time machine takes 58 minutes to prepare a backup of 200 GB of data on a flash drive then it will take 38 minutes to backup the same on a cheap price secondary hard drive and someway around 15-20 minutes to save the same 200 GB data on a latest fast SSD.
So is recommended to use fast speed primary and backup drives to reduce the Time Machine preparing backup process time.
Final Verdict:
Last but not the least, the tip to buy is, never ever buy a hard drive that would be difficult pronounce. These Chinese named hard drive are not of good quality to run longer. These are not reliable backup storage sources. It is therefore avoiding them is a wise to approach.
Video Help:
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