SuperDuper

How many GB's of data, and are you using FW400 or 800?

 

My 47 Gb backup takes little over an hour on my mini G4.
Something's up.

 

Oops, you're talking image...
I make my bootable backup (no image) to an external partition. It could take longer for an image, but the speed you got there was terrifyingly slow.
Go ahead and try it again, make sure there's enough room (guess you won't find that on your internal disk).
Good luck

 

It's the all files as in everything i presume (a complete copy of your disk).

 

What you need to do is think of your external as a mirror backup to your internal and start fresh. How? First, copy all files that are unique to the external drive to the internal drive. Next, repair your internal drive (if necessary) from within Disk Utility (it will tell you if you need to repair or not after you click the Repair button). Next, run Onyx and clean your caches and run the maintenance utilities, and repair your permissions. Now, after your computer is clean and restarted, run SuperDuper and go to preferences and tell it to NOT repair permissions before duping your drive (since you just did it). Now, have SuperDuper reformat your external drive and then copy your entire internal drive to it. This will take maybe an hour. In the end you will have the backup you need AND if you want to use the external again to store new files not on the internal HD you can certainly do it. You simply won't have backup of them until you copy them to the internal or burn discs of them.

 

I formatted my external HD so that one partition was the same size as my PB drive (named it "clone"), and the other partition was whatever was left (named it "extra files"). Then I use SuperDuper to clone to the "clone" partition, and then I can put any other files I want on the "extra files". I have my music and photos there, and not on the PB drive to save space on the internal. Works great for me!

Good Luck!

 

SuperDuper formats and then copies with each backup if you are asking it to make the drive bootable. I backup 30 gigs in just a few min... less then 20 for sure. Actaully since I boot from my external firewire miniStack to the internal drive in the mini that might make this apples to oranges...

 

It is vitally important that you have backup. That said, you probably need to buy another GIANT hard drive to be a backup. Put that in an external case (a new one), copy everything important to you to that drive as a backup. I also still suggest having a backup boot drive as it is MUCH easier than reinstalling OS X and then all your apps and then reloading all your files to it. (assuming you have backup to even reload). I would use your present external for that purpose.

PS If you have extremely important files (songs you have written, music you have composed, art you have created, books or stories you have written, etc, etc) then it is also vital to have off-site backup on CDs or DVDs (such as a relative's house), in case of your house being completely destroyed.

 

SuperDuper is Super, Indeed

It is creating the image that's slowing you down. Considering the fact that, in my experience with Apple, the hard drive's always the first to go, I don't let any of my Macs go without having a bootable external drive.

Figure out some way to reformat your external with a partition the size of your computer's hard drive and let SuperDuper do this for you. I run the "erase and copy" once a week and a "copy new only" the other 6 days. Perhaps a friend has enough room on an external drive to loan it to you for a day?

Then, if your internal ever fails, you just have to reboot onto the external, and your life keeps plugging along. It's a good feeling to be secure. And SuperDuper has been one of the most consistently secure and working programs I've tried to use.

(I just wish they'd put a front end on some options, like excluding files from backup, instead of those scripts.)