thanks for kind answers
I dont use encrypted file system
my client shows 8 connections(is that too low?)
The bottleneck is in verifying all of the transactions.
The earlier blocks had 0 transactions, hence the quick verification - there was nothing to verify! Many newer blocks have hundreds of transactions, which means your hard drive is crunching finding some (or all?) of the previous history for those transactions to verify that they are legitimate.
Be patient - it'll probably take 2-3 days to fully catch up, unfortunately. There isn't really an easy way around this, besides using a "lite" client.