Michael Valentine Jones (8/24/2012)

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You should run a copy_only backup to the nul device to see if the problem is reading the database data or writing the backup file to disk.

backup database [MyDatabase] to disk = N'NUL' with copy_only, stats = 10

This will tell you how long it takes to read the data from the disk and if that is the problem.

If it is fast, then the problem is more than likely writing the backup to your backup file.

Make sure that you use the COPY_ONLY option so that SQL Server does not see that as part of the backup chain.