I've just made a disk image using Seagate DiscWizard. (which is basically Acronis TI 'lite')
The process completed without a hitch and resulted in a .tib of 77 gb.
However, it took 24 hours to make.
Does that sound about right you to all the resident specialists here?
I'm running XP, SP3 writing the image direct (via a USB connection) to an external drive.
Many thanks