Is it normal for it to take 12 hours to create an image using Alcohol 120%?

[Sara2]

This is the first time I have tried to create an image from an original PC game and at the rate Alcohol120% starts out with it will take approx 12 hours so I cancelled after 30 mins. Details:

Location: Australia (all stuff purchased here)
Drive: Pioneer DVR-106D
Max read speed: 32x
Max write speed: 16x
Game: Battlecruiser Millenium (orig. not Gold edition)
Platform: PC
Size: 655 Mb
Protection: Safedisk v2 (according to this site)

I set Alcohol to 'Safedisk 2' and read at maximum speed which on this drive is 32x but surely it can't be this excrutiating to backup a disk...what's the deal???

Was also wondering what "ALCOHOLER" is, what it's used for and if it's worth having??

Thanks guys