I have found many times that my Akeeba Backup takes very long because he seem to be very slow during all the EasySocial files like ...public_html/media/com_easysocial/photos/103/115 It takes up to an hour before he gets further than about 71% backup.
Could there be a reason for this? I use 1.4.7 and my host is running on fast SSD drives now but is still slow on this task.