How to Save You (Make You Fast), Time Machine

Last night, my Macbook Pro 2015 broke from an unsuccessful program install and could not start up. Time machine saves me, again.

Data is priceless and duplication is the only way to protect it. Time Machine is a useful program, however, its speed could be deadly slow if you are using a remote storage (instead of directly connected via usb or other cable).

After many trial and error attempts, my current solution is:

• use NextCloud to sync codes, images, and other non-application non-system files. If you are also a Synology user, this platform is much better than Drive 2.0;
• use Time Machine to backup only system files and applications, with the speed-up setting as below (use the SMB protocol instead of the AFP protocol for Synology).

Even only a small portion of my files (~100 Gb) is handled by Time Machine, they could be a very slow 100 Gb without speeding up. The reason is the system sets an upper bound on the performance of Time Machine by default. Running the following code would save you tons of time:

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0

You can change it back after the first & major backups with:

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=1