I was surprised it took so long too but when I do an entire HD backup, it takes about as long. I have a 1TB HD on my desktop unit and a 2TB eSATA external drive with 2 HD bays. I've also got a spare 1TB eSATA that I use periodically as well.

My entire itl is about 300GB an that includes about 6000 songs and 100 HD movies. I also have music videos that aren't included in that count. I'm pretty sure the USB2.0 port was my limiting factor with the data xfer taking so long but I'm glad I only had to do that once.

I bought a 3TB AirPort Time Capsule from Apple so I can use Time Machine backup. The first backup I made after I got everything set up the way I wanted took about 6 hours. Subsequent backups are done within a couple minutes and I'm just letting the machine do its thing in the background. The Time Capsule router is much better than the Linksys router I just replaced. I wasn't going to but I saw others state that the signal strength and the throughput was consistently better when they did their upgrade so I did mine and I'm really happy with it. I guess I've become a fanboi!

The transfer was disc to disc and had nothing to do with the clouds. My mention of the iCloud account was for my Contacts and Calendar. I switched over to Apple's suite of tools. I've been an Outlook user for my calendar for years but it always annoyed me that Google calendar had to be imported in a round about way with Outlook. The only thing I don't care for is the brown color limitation of the calendar graphics on the Apple but I can deal with it as long as it works. It's not an Android device so customizations are a bit limited but I'm enjoying the stability of Apple products.

FedEx and UPS alike will both leave packages on our porch. I was just on a rant because of being mad at myself for not seeing a text that I wasn't watching for because each time I checked the tracking web site including before I went to bed the night before, I was being told the delivery wasn't until the following day. I had no idea they'd pull ahead delivery by another day and not tell me about it until the morning of delivery day or I would have had my phone on high volume and sitting on the bed stand. I guess I'll know next time! (Oh yeah, it was signature required so neither will leave anything on the door step without a sig and I'm glad for that. These are expensive items that if you're in an area where trouble tends to happen, things can just disappear. We haven't had packages disappear off our porch but I wouldn't have wanted this to be the first because a driver disregarded the signature requirements and just dropped the package off.)

Like I said, it was my own fault but I've been over it for a while. It's fascinating how many people continue to comment about my OP! I guess it goes to show that internet footprints last forever.