MacOS – Time Machine Extremely slow

Things to check:

• Software Update (read the description to see if it fixes the issue for your OS X 10.7 server)
• Check if OS X 10.7 Server requires its Time Machine to be formatted using Case-sensitive, Journaled Mac OS X Extended. Anecdotally, I've always formatted my Time Machine backup as Mac OS X (Journaled) and Time Machines works fine.
• Check the Permissions. Check that your OS X 10.7 Server user id has access to the USB partition.

If your drive is corrupted in any way you probably don't want to use it for backup purposes any more, unless the data is not of great value to you.

Apple does not allow an easy transfer from drive to drive regarding backups. I think this is due to the way TimeMachine works (As stated in this apple discussion thread)

Now how to do it anyways ? I would simply use command line power. If you're the admin of the computer, you can simply open Terminal and do something along this:

• sudo -s
• rsync -avhW --progress < Drag and drop external Hard Drive here >< Drag and Drop DropBox folder here >

or

• mv < Drag and Drop backup folder here >< Drag and Drop DropBox folder here, ending with a "/">

sudo -s puts you in the super-admin position, so you have full access to the system

rsync will sync the content and you can stop and continue at any time. mv will move the whole thing at once.

You should be able to drag and drop any folder within the backup to any folder on you internal/other external drive. Only the "Machine.backup" folder is protected.