Here's the thing: it's likely not stuck on the folder it's showing you. Rather, it's stuck on a file somewhere else, and that command I send before --

sudo lsof | grep "SVUClone"

Is what will tell us what that is.

That command is a very basic part of the OS, and if it won't produce output, it's very hard for me to diagnose what's going on.

I'm sorry I wasn't still there when you tried this again so I could give you immediate feedback (it was after midnight in these parts), but if you can get it to the point where you're sure it's stuck, and then try the above again, hopefully we'll get some results, which will tell us what's going on.

(By the way, after you stopped it, you should be able to look at the files that were actually copied, and I think you'll find that the folder being listed was copied in full.)

One more thing: you might want to open up the Console application and check both the System and Console logs, to see if something's writing frantically to them. If so, that constant I/O to a file will cause a problem, and could be what's going on. The name of the program that's writing is one of the first things on the line, so if that's happening, *that* program is having a serious issue -- and fixing *that* is the key to getting this to work.

Okay, sorry for the delay in getting back to you, went to the Cubs game last couple days, woot.

Anyway, I started Console and found a ton of errors being reported, mainly from programs that are no longer installed. I went through most of them and got them taken care of, I tried SuperDuper again and it gets about half way through the backup (according to the top statusbar) and then just hangs (I left it for about an hour and it didn't move anymore).

I tried the SVUClone command and it returned nothing, after typing it, the cursor remains on a blank line for about a minute and then returns to the normal prompt.

Note: Any recommendations of programs that might help me clean up those errors that are reported in Console? I use Cocktail and let that run with all relevant options enabled and it finishes but I'm not sure if that would even clean up these errors.

Well, a few things...

If the lsof command returns nothing, that likely means it's crashing... something I've not seen happen. Do you have an SVUClone crash log in /Library/Logs/Crash Reporter or in the same folder off your Home?

Not sure what would help with the errors...I'd check each app's support site for uninstall instructions.

WOOT, got the bad apps/errors cleaned up and ran SuperDuper. Took about 1 hour to do a full backup yesterday. Did a smart update today just to make sure it worked and it went flawlessly and finished in about 10 minutes.

I'm sold, I now have a top notch backup routine, thanks for the help.

Great! And, you've got a cleaner system to boot, which is even better! :)

Yep, a cleaner system and I learned a lot about how to keep it clean too, whew.

Thanks again.

Yikes, the dreaded "learning experience"! ;)