ATI 2009 Home backups very slow and continue to fail

Backing up 2 partitons, 90 GB to an external eSATA hard drive, Vista.The following events happen: (Using ATI 2009 upgrade)
12:55 PM - 1of 3 creating partition image, remaining time 8 hrs.
1:55 PM - error writing the file click browse to specify volume location, retry to try again, or click cancel. remaining time 8 hrs.
I downloaded the AcronisCleanUp file and did a clean uninstall and re-installed and looked at the forum and tried a couple of things, I couldn't find anything
definitive to resolve the problem. My previous version worked fine. If you have a solution to this, please provide clear instructions, I am fairly new at this.
I appreciate your help, thanks.