Just some performance notes:
First start with an .bitcoin directory from the stock 0.7.1 client:
The "Reindexing blocks on disk"-task went to ~90% quite fast (about 5min), than come nearly to an halt. About one block per 5-10sec.
After restarting the app it started a bit faster for ~100..200 blocks but slowed down again to 1block per 5sec (some are faster). Is still reindexing. About 16000 blocks remaining.
OS: Ubuntu 12.10, Notebook, normal harddisk (non SSD); CPU: one core is saturated with bitcoin-qt