And on this point:
What you don’t want to do is corrupt the pst file, and I think that’s why they are going real slow.
It's true. You want to be careful here. That might make it (possibly) a two hour job -- though, honestly, I can't see how: it's realistically a 5 minute job. I do it all the time.
They are saying this will take weeks. There is no GOOD reason for them to say that.
Six years ago, my boss was backing up his HD at the office (AF unit) and we had a power flux....next thing we know....the back-up stops, and his entire PST was screwed up. Five years of messages gone. The back-up? We went to it and for some reason, the drive was corrupted.
Last year as I was leaving my gov’t job....I was in the midst of backing up my PST, which was way over the recommended size of ‘safety’. In essence, my backup went wrong, and I had to resort to a back-up from six months prior. The PST business is not a stable platform, in my opinion.