HMC Save Critical Console Data

 Has anyone run into a problem where the Save Critical Console Data
function runs for a long time and seems to not complete?  I'm trying to run
an initial backup of our new HMC and the first 2 saves have behaved this
way (the first one (18hours+) was due to an unformatted DVD, but the second
one was freshly formatted from the HMC for backup/restore(I ended it and
rebooted at around 4 hours).  Support has suggested that I load MH00695,
MH00746, MH00688, and MH00822, but i'd really like to get a backup
completed before loading HMC fixes (which will also be a first for me).

Any ideas on why the process might not be completing?  It gives the
following status:

Backup starting...
Generating the list of files to archive...
Number of files to archive is: 1541
Creating archive file...
Offloading archive file...

At this point the DVD drive light is blinking every so often.