IOS – Does the time machine backup include the backups of the iPhone

Since OS X 10.7 (Lion), Time Machine (if enabled) keeps local snapshots on portable Macs. This gives you Time Machine-like access to recent backups, in case you need to restore a deleted or modified file (however you still need a proper external backup to protect against disk failure). This is what the Backups item is measuring.

This feature isn't enabled by default on desktop Macs (are you sure you have a Mac Pro, and not a MacBook Pro? One is a laptop, the other is a desktop), but can be enabled by running sudo tmutil enablelocal in Terminal, and disabled by running sudo tmutil disablelocal (you will be prompted for your password in both cases).

As noted in Apple's KB article on the subject, once free space on your disk falls below 20%, it will start trimming older local snapshots, and it will speed up this process if it falls below 10%. So if you do nothing, you should see your drive space return to approximately 50 GB free. You can continue to store new things on your hard drive without fear of running low on space, as Time Machine will just slowly trim away snapshots as you add new data.

This is not normal if every backup takes that long and/or it never finishes.

You should let the backup end if at all possible. Each time you interrupt a backup - you add even more time to check the slow work that was made and then pick up where it left off. If you interrupt a back up too many times, it could take a week to get over a problem spot.

You could:

• Let it run and see if the next time is quick.
• Interrupt it and delete the partial backup
• Clear the backups and start with a clean slate if you don't need the backups or don't care to troubleshoot a temporary issue.

If you want to troubleshoot, you have several options. Apple has a tmdiagnose tool that they use to collect logs and statistics relating to items that can cause problems.

If you can get help from Apple, I would do that and let them provide the training and expertise needed to make sense of the volumes of data that the diagnosis provides.

There are some other things you might try in this article:

• Time Machine: Troubleshooting backup issues

Feel free to post back a more specific question if you find the issue doesn't resolve itself or you need more information about how to interpret your results from the article or the diagnosis tool. Also as you commented, it could simply be a bad hardware situation.