Time Machine Backup

I have been using Time Machine to backup my files on a Seagate external drive. I just bought a Seagate portable drive, and Time Machine was going to take 210 days to back up my 172 Gig of data. The Seagate folks got that down to 28 days - oh, joy. I returned the drive, and bought a larger, faster Toshiba. Now we are about 5 days.

Can anybody i) explain why the length of time and/or ii) what I can do to make it reasonable?

Are you backing up the files wirelessly? That can add significantly to the backup time needed.

My backup is via USB 2.0. The more I read, the more I realize that this Time Machine problem is not solvable right now. I don't know what millions of other users are going to do, but I think I will research and purchase a better program.

Thanks for your suggestions.

USB 2.0 is your issue, not Time Machine. It's slow when even compared to FireWire 400, let alone FireWire 800, USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt which are on a whole other level.

Hi. The iMac doesn't support USB 3.0, yet. I have a firewire cable but the Toshiba drive only has a USB port. Looks like I'm done in!

Instead of using Time Machine, consider using a cloning program that does smart backups and at the same time renders the backup bootable. Which by the way Time Machine does not. Try Carbon Copy Cloner, download from here. However, with that large a backup, whatever program you use is not going to be a speed demon.