> Hello,
>
> I have Firebird 2.1.2.18118 running as superserver install on Win XP
> Pro SP3.
>
> The database size has a few tables, however only one table grows large.
> That large table has about 150Million entries. The size of the DB is
> 15.5GB.
>
> The database was running quite slow and on other occassions, this was
> caused by 'garbage' transactions. I would solve this by doing a sweep,
> backup and restore.
>
> This time I did something different.
>
> I deleted some data from the large file about 6mths worth which is
> about 70Million records. Then I commenced a backup using the command
>
> gbak -v -t -user SYSDBA -password "masterkey" DATABASENAME.fdb
> DATABASENAME.FBK
>
> at the cmd prompt.
>
> This started creating the FBK file and I could see what it was doing.
>
> Then when the backup got to the large file, I could see
>
> gbak: writing data for table SMDR
>
> and gbak just hangs there this has been in this state for about 3 hours
> !!!
>
> the DATABASENAME.FBK is not growing in size for about 3 hours.
>
> I looked at task manager and could see that the CPU usage is tiny ie
> <4% and fbserver.exe occassionaly displaying <2%.
>
> There are no users on the system (other than me connected via RDP).
>
> My question is, does this seem normal (I don't think so)? What can I do
> now other than look at gbak and wonder if it's doing something?
>
> Please help.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Theodore
>

yes - let it finish. It's collecting your garbage.
Next time you delete 70 mill records then wish to backup and restore, use
the -g switch with gbak. This will ignore garbage and be faster. No use
garbage collecting if you are going to restore.
If your intent is to backup without restoring, then do it as you have done
and wait til it finishes
Alan