It may be that your Time Machine backups are being slowed down by Finder. Here is a quick tip on how to speed them back up.
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It may be that your Time Machine backups are being slowed down by Finder. It appears that for some users, Time Machine backups slow to unbearable speeds while attempting to back up. Here is a quick tip, courtesy of macosxhints.com, on how to speed them back up.
According to the post by "wayfarer", Time Machine backup speeds went from nearly 5MBps to 100KBps and the CPU had spiked to nearly 90 percent.
A look at Activity Monitor showed almost all the CPU usage due to Finder, and a look at the Open Files and Ports by Finder showed it accessing the Applications folder in the backup, crawling through all the application packages over and over again.
To alleviate the situation, "wayfarer" quit the Finder application via Activity Monitor and according to the post, directly following that action, write speeds were back to 5MBps. So, if you are having issues with your Time Machine backup, it may be worth attempting to quit Finder using Activity Monitor.
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