Why so long for "Ignoring" /Library?

[macmath]

Hello. First of all, thank you so much for SuperDuper!

I've searched here for similar issues and haven't found one quite like this, so I'm going to bother you.

I ran a "Copy Different files..." on a few directories in the home directory. I believe I had it set correctly because it did exactly what I asked. I watched the log, and it was very fast except for with /Library. Below is an excerpt of that log. The whole task took 43 minutes, but for some reason /Library took 32 of those minutes, even though it was completely skipped. I know that it sorts through the files anyway, but /Developer is somewhat larger than /Library and took only a little over a minute.

I've read here about the 'floating file' issue, and there are some files in /Library which belong to a user besides root, but would that matter when the files are to be skipped?

Thank you very much for your time.
Ed

|06:50:09 AM|Info| Ignoring /Users
|06:51:04 AM|Info| Copying /Users/haar/bin
|06:51:04 AM|Info| Copying /Users/haar/Desktop
|06:51:14 AM|Info| Copying /Users/haar/Documents/Current
|06:51:14 AM|Info| Copying /Users/haar/Documents/Hidden
|06:52:14 AM|Info| Ignoring /.Spotlight-V100
|06:52:22 AM|Info| Ignoring /.Trashes
|06:52:22 AM|Info| Ignoring /.vol
|06:52:22 AM|Info| Ignoring /Applications
|06:53:47 AM|Info| Ignoring /automount
|06:53:47 AM|Info| Ignoring /bin
|06:53:47 AM|Info| Ignoring /cores
|06:53:47 AM|Info| Ignoring /Trash
|06:53:47 AM|Info| Ignoring /Network
|06:53:47 AM|Info| Ignoring /Desktop Folder
|06:53:47 AM|Info| Ignoring /dev
|06:53:47 AM|Info| Ignoring /Developer
|06:54:55 AM|Info| Ignoring /Documents
|06:55:19 AM|Info| Ignoring /System
|07:00:29 AM|Info| Ignoring /Images
|07:00:29 AM|Info| Ignoring /Library
|07:32:09 AM|Info| Ignoring /lost+found

[dnanian]

32 minutes is a very long time to ignore that folder. My guess (and it can only be that) is that the directory might be stored in weak sectors of the hard disk, and stepping through those files (the whole tree is walked) was delayed by the speed of those reads (which might be retrying)...

[macmath]

Thank you for the response, as well as the speediness of it.

So, if that's the problem, I'm guessing that there is no way to address it short of cloning to another drive and re-cloning back (basically a defragmenting). I'd feel safer using SuperDuper! for defragmenting than a defragmenter.

If some day I decide to do that, I'll write back and let you know if that fixed it.

[dnanian]

Well, I don't mean the drive is fragmented. Rather, I think it's failing, or might be. Be careful!

[macmath]

Originally Posted by dnanian

Well, I don't mean the drive is fragmented. Rather, I think it's failing, or might be. Be careful!

Yikes! Then I'll back up doubly-often to my external firewire drive. My data is duplicated on my office Mac, but my wife's is not.

I'll let you know if the drive dies one of these days. Thanks for the warning.

Thanks again for the support. I typically read the manuals and forums before I ask, but it is really nice to have support there when those don't suffice.

[dnanian]

Let me also suggest that you download and install a copy of SMART Reporter (free, from VT). That'll give you some warning (hopefully) before failure.