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rreveal Author

Level 1

8 points

how long should a backup take?

How long should a Mac backup take using Time machine?

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.3

Posted on Aug 1, 2021 10:35 AM

Top-ranking reply

D.I. Johnson

Level 7

24,143 points

Posted on Aug 1, 2021 10:49 AM

How long it takes depends on several things, including the amount of data to be backed up, the speed of the backup drive and the connection type used, USB v Thunderbolt, for example.

Using USB-A, a Time Machine backup can take a couple hours to do the initial backup of a typical HD with a few hundred GB of data. After that, each subsequent incremental backup usually only takes a few minutes.

A TM backup via Thunderbolt connected SSD drive will only take a fraction of that.

Are you experiencing a specific problem with a backup attempt?

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how long should a backup take?

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