[SWLUG] Backing up took 3 days

[James]

I was hoping someone would be able to shed some light onto this problem 
- a simple backup of two directories (rather large directories) usually 
takes at most 5 hours. But this week, it took 3 days.

Every few weeks, i turn on the external drive, and run:

cp -fvr /home/james/.* /media/backups/home
cp -fvr /mnt/win_c2/.* /media/backups/docs

On fedora core, and way back on mandriva 10.2, this only took a few 
hours - possibly 5 at most. On suse, its taken 3 days, and is still going.

The drive is USB2.0 - a possibility is that its only running at usb1's 
speed? If so how can i check this?

Anything else it could be? There isnt really that much more files to be 
backed up since fedora core 4, so its not as if theres thousands of 
large files (since the last backup).

It just seems really strange that it took such a long time. Im currently 
using suse 10 (eval).

Thanks in advance

James