handholding needed through backup [failed first 2 attempts]
 

okay. i'm trying to backup my mbp. my backstory can be found here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=469442
although it's most likely somewhat irrelevant to any help i need here.

i need to backup my files. i have tiger on a mbp that's only about 7 months old. i don't have time machine. i downloaded super duper and hoped everything would go smoothly. i only have one portable hard drive with 100gb of space. i have things already on there. that i would like to keep on there. going through the setup, i choose to use the Copy Newer option so that my drive wasn't erased [and subsequently paid for my version of Super Duper to access said option]. So i attempted to do my first backup and it stalled while copying. when i saw this was the case i stopped it - shut things down and tried to run it again. it has stopped again in the same spot as before at:

1,136 of 431,633 files evaluated , 1,122 files copied. Effective copy speed 3.11MB/s.
3.96 GB evaluated, 0.00 MB already up to date, 3.93 GB copied

it got to that point at around 27 minutes. i let it run for a while to see if maybe it was just slowing down. the elapsed time has since gone to 1:36:25 with no change.

i don't really know what the difference between a bootable and nonbootable backup is - i mean i do - but as long as my files are recoverable and i can get them back i don't care. i need someone to help me as though i was a 3rd grader trying to do this. what do i need to do to make this work?

Are you backing up to an image?

not to sound dumb but is that the same thing as "disk image"? i think so. i thought that was the only option when using the Copy Newer option?

That's your problem, though: your external disk is formatted as "FAT32", so your image can't grow larger than 4GB... you can't back up to a FAT32 drive like this.

great. so am i SOL? can i like - make the copy on the computer then move it to the external drive? or something?

You can make a copy to a drive that's formatted as HFS+... but that external, formatted as it is, won't support a large image.