Help! Still can't back up MacBook on Hammer Firewire

[k8conant]

I'm a newcomer to SuperDuper! and haven't yet been able to successfully backup my MacBook (74.5GB = 66 GB on MacBook HD partition and 8 GB on Untitled Windows XP partition) to my Hammer external drive (320GB shown as 298.1 in Disk Uility). I have the Hammer formatted GPT (GUID Partition Table) and 2 partitions right now (Intel_Boot @ 148.92GB HFS+ and PPC_Boot @ 148.73GM HFS+[for Mac Mini G4 running Tiger later]).

I've tried for days to get a full backup of "MacBook HD" and it hangs no matter what options I use. I see in the discussions that there have been problems with OS X 10.4.8. My backups have stopped at different points from 1.7GB to ~6GB.

Detailed instructions would be appreciated. I've verfified the disks repeatedly, repartitioned the Hammer, prayed, cursed, whatever.

Help!

[dnanian]

"Hangs", as in "looks stuck"? If so, how long have you left it: it could just be copying a large file or -- if you're using FileVault -- you might not be following the User's Guide instructions to back up from a non-FileVault account...

[k8conant]

last night I started it then hid it and 2 hours later checked on it and it had hung 1-1/2 hours earlier.

[k8conant]

I don't think I have FileVault turned on.

[k8conant]

FileVault is turned off.

[dnanian]

OK. Again, "hang" is different than "crash". So: we need to determine what file is causing the problem.

When it's stuck, please open Terminal. Then, copy the following to the clipboard:

sudo lsof | grep SDCopy

Paste that into Terminal. Press Return, enter your password (it won't echo) and press Return.

That'll have a list of what we have open. The last two lines are what we're copying (from and to), and should help determine what's really happening here.