>My concern is that our backup is taking way too long. (over 24 hours)  Note 
>that
>this backup is the original full backup of this data.
>By monitoring the client session we see that the backup will progress to a
>certain amount of data being transferred and then we will
>spend a majority of the rest of the backup time in IdleW status.
>
>It seems that we are spending a majority of our time evaluating whether a file
>needs to be backed up or not.

Bob - In that this is the first backup of the file system, there would be no
      actual test for whether the file should be backed up, in that there is
no prior instance of it on the server to compare against; so time should not
be going there.  The topology of the file system in the NetApp box may be a
problem if there are, say, many thousands of files in a single directory, in
that anything traversing such a directory would take time.  Another problem,
touched on by a prior posting, is that your 100 Mb links between your client
and the NetApp box, and the client to the TSM server, might not be running
at 100 Mb, as many customers have experienced with that kind of ethernet in
Auto Negotiate mode.  Having Compression active, as either defined in the
client options file or the node definition in the TSM server, could be a
source of delay in the client sending files.  I list other delay factors that
customers have reported, in ADSM.QuickFacts.
    You may want to consider activating client tracing to see where the delay
evidences itself.
       Richard Sims, BU