# Innobackupex taking huge time for preparing backup

**URL:** <https://forums.percona.com/t/innobackupex-taking-huge-time-for-preparing-backup/6460>\
**Category:** Percona XtraBackup\
**Created:** [July 16, 2018, 7:43am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/innobackupex-taking-huge-time-for-preparing-backup/6460 "2018-07-16T07:43:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![raghupradeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c5a1d2/32.png) [@raghupradeep](https://forums.percona.com/u/raghupradeep)\
**Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 7:43am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/innobackupex-taking-huge-time-for-preparing-backup/6460/1 "2018-07-16T07:43:31Z")

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We have a database on PXC which runs into 3 TB in size and growing. For backup we choose xtrabackup (innobackupex). We are taking backup to a USB based external HDD. The backup took about 9 hours to complete. But, when we are trying to prepare the backup, it is has only completed about 50 % in 24 hours time. I am preparing the backup as below

innobackupex --apply-log --redo-only --use-memory=4G /PATH\_TO\_BACKUP

Is this slowness expected ? It took only 9 hours to take full backup to the same disk, but only prepared 50% in 24 hours. Am I missing something ?