Would restores go faster if all backups were paused? If so is there a way to tell the server to do that or maybe something that could be added in the future?
In the Administrators Guide, see Section 8.1.3 “Do not do file backups” and 8.1.4 “Do not do image backups.” Then wait for whatever backup is running to finish - Activities tab - before doing your restore. If you’re in a hurry you can try to stop the running backups. Usually takes a minute or so.
You might also want to schedule the backups for outside working hours, if possible, when the server and network are not busy.