My Book Studio Edition II / Mac - Time Machine VERY Slow

Portable Drives My Passport
1

My Book Studio Edition II 6TB formatted as RAID so 3TB Available. 100GB free.
Used for Time Machine / iTunes Library
iMac 21.5" 3Ghz 8GB from 2017 / macOS High Sierra 10.13.6
USB2 connection

Time machine is incredibly slow. I’m looking at a 3.75GB back up which says it’s got about 20 hours to go. iTunes also very sluggish. Any ideas why or is this simply too old now?

2

Hi amckinna,

Please refer to the link given below to troubleshoot the issue.

https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8318

3

Hi Logan, thanks for taking the time to assist.

The Studio Editiion drive in question is connected directly to the iMac using a USB2 connector, and isn’t being used via wifi or as a NAS. It is however very full (there’s now only about 100GB of the 3TB available) and I’m wondering if that’s the cause of the problem.

Unfortunately, there appears to be a bug/incompatibility between the software originally used to create the RAID (WD Drive Manager) and the MacOS - which is discussed in several threads from around 2017 - and I can’t do anything to inspect the drive. A new download of the old Drive Manager software installs correctly (so it says), but the little blue WD icon appears momentarily in the Mac menu bar and then disappears. And the new WD Utilities software doesn’t recognise the drive at all so I’m a bit stuffed I think from that POV.