Time Machine running exteeeeemly slooooooow

[TyesMacs]

Good afternoon all. It's been a while since my last post but that is a good thing.....until now.

On my 2008 iMac, I'm running Mavericks with a 1.5 TB HDD (just over 500 GB used) and 6 GB of memory. I want to upgrade to Yosemite so I decided to back up the hdd (I was doing it prior to this but my WD Ext drive died so I had to start over). My iMac overall functions pretty well for its age. I have a 1.5TB ext hdd serving as my Time Machine backup, connected via Firewire. I know that an initial backup will take some time but out of the just over 500 GB to be backed up, its only backed up 50 GB....after running continuously for SIX days. The destination hdd is a fully functional 1.5 TB WD drive that has two partitions: 1TB for TM & 500GB for redundant storage of important files outside of my internal hdd. I will run Onyx later today just to confirm the hardware is still good. I have tried what I know but now I've reached my limited final frontier. Perhaps with some wisdom, I can expand that here. Thanks in advance.

 

[pigoo3]

Just so we know. How full is this external HD?

- Nick

 

[TyesMacs]

It is clean....When I bought it, I formatted and partitioned it. It only has the 50GB thus far for TM on the 1TB and nothing on the 500GB.

I also noticed that while during the back up (which it is doing now), the TM icon up top is not moving like it used to and it is black. But if I click on it, it offers me it's status and preferences.

 

[TyesMacs]

Well, it's been two weeks and TM has been running and has 800MB remaining completing this new initial backup. I have come to the conclusion I need to do a clean install - upgrading to Yosemite. After further 'function testing' of my iMac and further convincing myself, I discovered the following: 1) it is running slower (it hangs periodically opening some apps); 2) when connecting either my iPad 2, iPhone 4S or 5 to sync w/iTunes, they don't show up in the iTunes, any Finder window or on the desktop; 3) hangs opening & navigating in any web browser or Finder window; 4) would not remain connected to a new Buffalo NAS via wireless or ethernet (which I planned to serve as my TM destination). And after upgrading, I will kick my kids off of it!!!