Backing up MacBook Pro - Painfully Slow

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Hi,

So I have a MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010) with a 250GB hard drive, 245GB of which is used up.

The laptop has become incredibly slow, to the point where it takes about 10 minutes to start using Safari after booting it up.

There is nothing of particular importance on it apart from a 35GB photo library (in the Apple Photos app).

Because it's become so slow, I want to back it up and format the laptop to its original state and start fresh, but keep access to my photo library through the external hard drive.

I bought 50GB of iCloud storage to back up my photo library. But at the rate its uploading, it will take a week to complete.

I also bought a 320GB Sonnics (USB 2.0) external hard drive from Amazon to back up the entire internal hard drive. After leaving Time Machine to backup the laptop for 5 hours, less than 1GB had been transferred to the external hard drive.

I'm fairly good with technology, but this is something I know nothing about and have never done before. Am I doing something wrong? Will I just have to wait?

As always, any advice is much appreciated

Thanks,
Hugo

ED E

Better suited to the Mac sub as its TM specific.