Only the first time, it will take several hours.
After that, it will much faster, In my case, it usually took 20 minutes, maximum 1 hour to show on my local client.
Thanks
so after bitcoin builds the initial blkindex each time i run it it simply adds to build. Do i back up only the wallet file or the entire folder? Seriously I want to hid my back up usb under my mattress.
You only need to backup the wallet.dat file.
However, if you backup the entire folder, it can save your time to download all the blockindex.
If you want to hid your usb, you can consider run the bitcoin with a parameter -datadir=Bitcoin
You can copy the folder \AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin to the same directory of Bitcoin.exe,
And then save the folder contains both the program and the AppData.