Backing up files to an external hard drive

I run a couple of websites.
In a long overdue move, I finally got an external drive for backup.
About seven hours into copying over the many folders, the automated process came to an abrupt halt and displayed an alert to the effect that one of the file names was too long. The only option was to acknowledge it (by hitting "OK"), at which point it just stopped completely! I have no idea what files have made it to each folder...so I basically have to begin all over again.
This happened twice.
Is there any way to...
1. Keep this from happening again?
2. Figure out easily which of the thousands of files did indeed make it, so as to pick up again from that point?
Thanks in advance, for your suggestions!
(By the way...the whole procedure is going to take about 85 hours. So I could conceivably end up taking my own life, if there's no way around this snag!)
PowerBook G4 17-inch   Mac OS X (10.3.9)  
PowerBook G4 17-inch   Mac OS X (10.3.9)  
PowerBook G4 17-inch   Mac OS X (10.3.9)  

Is the external drive properly formatted? Do the following:
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select the hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process will take 30 minutes to an hour or more depending upon the drive size.

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