[axxxxe]

I am trying to backup an old G4 PowerBook (Leopard) to a new iMac (I don't have an external disk).

I started the PowerBook in target disk mode and connected it to the iMac with a FireWire cable. I then run SuperDuper full copy from the PowerBook hard disk to an uncompressed read-only disk image on the iMac desktop.

SuperDuper then runs extremely slowly, it takes a minute before the first files are copied, and then it creeps slowly through the files, eventually stopping at about file 27,000 (out of 500K files) after an hour or so. It's been sitting at the same file count now for about 16 hours.

This is the second time I've tried the above procedure. The first time the iMac Finder was frozen along with SuperDuper, though other apps were still working. I rebooted the iMac (with the PowerBook still attached) which took a VERY long time - maybe 15 minutes for the iMac to boot. Disconnecting the PowerBook restored a normal speedy boot sequence.

This time Finder is not frozen but SuperDuper sure is.

Any suggestions? Is the PowerBook hard disk dying? If so, what are my best chances of getting as much data off as possible?

Thanks! (Thanks also for a great tool that's always worked perfectly until now ;-)