How long should preparing take first time?
 

I have just bought SD and I am trying to do a backup of my system drive (250GB - 180 used) before upgrading to Leopard.
It has been 1hour and 3 minutes and it is still preparing the drive (source, not destination)....

How long should this take?!

And what is it doing? All I get is the spinning progress thing in the top right of the 'Prepare to Copy Files' title.

The machine is a MacPro (if that makes any difference).

It's now 2 and half hours and it is still preparing the source drive!

Stop it and restart your Mac (power cycle both Mac and drive)... something's not responding right.