E30 - Rescue & Recovery "Rejuvenate" still at 0% after 20 hours

Question

Dear Sirs,
     How long can R&R "Rejuvenate" stay at "System restore in progress... 0%" before I should begin to worry?  I started a Rejuvenate on my E30 about 20 hours ago, and for at least 19 of those hours it's been sitting at 0%.  (And yes, I'm beginning to worry!)
In terms of details:
1)  I purchased this E30 from Lenovo in August 2011.  It's a fairly basic machine with two 500GB HDDs in RAID 1; the drive is about 27% full; and I've done regular backups (to a 500 Lenovo USB external hard drive) via Rescue & Recovery without ever encountering any problems.
2)  I have never defragmented the disc (at least until this current "Rejuvenate" attempt).
3)  Just prior to the Rejuvenate, I (by way of a test) did a full Restore (via Rescue and Recovery) of my machine to a backup I made earlier in the day.  This Restore proceeded without at hitch, and took about 90 minutes.  The machine worked normally after the Restore, and had correctly reverted to the state it was in when I made the backup -- so everything seemed fine.
4)  I then restarted the machine, restarted R&R, and selected the Rejuvenate option.  The first Rejuvenate steps seemed to go well:  first came a small incremental backup, and then the "Capturing current settings" step proceeded pretty rapidly.  The next step (according to the "Rescue and Recovery Progress" window) is "Restoring Files" -- and the machine has stayed on this step for the past 19+ hours.
5)  On my screen, there are two windows atop a "Lenovo -- Rescue and Recovery 4 --  ThinkVantage Technologies" background.  One window is "Rescue and Recovery Progress", and inside that window is the word "Rejuvenation", and then five steps.  The first step is "Capturing current settings", and there's a green check mark next to it.  The second step is "Restoring files", and there's a blue arrow pointing to it.   Three more steps (e.g., "Apply saved system-wide settings", etc.) sit below, without any markings. The other window is "Progress", on which there's a completely empty horizontal bar graph, below which are the words "System restore in progress... 0%".  I've tried Alt-Tab, and no other windows are visible anywhere.
6)  The machine is not frozen:  I can move the mouse icon freely, and can drag the two progress windows about the screen.
7)  The HDD LED on the front panel of the E30 tower emits a brief low-power flash at precise 1-second intervals (question:  is the machine polling the disc or the optical drive?).  At various times in the day, this LED has briefly but fully brightened in the random, flashing way that it does when the discs are being written to (e.g., about an hour ago it was starting to seem normal, and I was beginning to feel relieved) -- but now it's reverted to its 1-second dim flashing, without any bright bursts at all.
8)  The red light on the external USB Drive is mostly continuous bright red, but this light flickers randomly and frequently, as if the external drive is actually doing something.  These flickers, however, can happen (and usually do happen) without any corresponding change in the E30's front panel LED's regular 1-second "ticks".
9)  Unfortunately, the above info pretty much exhausts all my knowledge about computers, and I have no access to an IT expert (I'm a freelance writer who has to run CAD models on occasion, and this E30 sits in my bedroom "office").  I've searched the Lenovo forums for threads on this "0%" issue, and apart from the Alt-Tab suggestion to look for hidden windows, I haven't understood anything in them (sorry).  Also, in hindsight, I wish I had put a backup on something other than the external USB drive -- e.g., presumably if I do something drastic like turn the E30 off, I corrupt both the E30 drive and the external drive backup files, yes?
And, so.....am I in trouble?  Have I done something wrong?  And if so, is there any way I can get my computer working again?  Or is R&R working properly, and the Defragmentation part of the Rejuvenate is just taking a long time (because I've used the E30 for over three years without ever defragmenting or rejuvenating)?  Any advice (or even reassurance) would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you very much (and Congratulations on the new P-series Thinkstations -- I saw them when I logged on to compose this query;  may you please all have great success with the new machines!).
Yours, - W
P.S. -- in the time it's taken to compose this query, the front panel HDD LED has begun to occasionally flash again (random, intermittent, full power flashes, separated by long periods of 1-second "ticks") -- so things are sort of working, yes?  =)

Answer 1

Right -- the "Rejuvenate" process has finally ended, 43.5 hours after I started it.  =)
(The user interface is really confusing -- even after I thought things were done, windows would spontaneously pop up and tell me to reboot the computer;  it took 4 reboots before a final pop up said "Rejuvenation Successful"....)
Questions for the Experts:
     This was a painful process:  among other things, I've been minus my workstation for two solid days, and at no point did I have any idea when and if the computer would begin to work again.  Hence....
1)  Is "Rejuvenation" worth the trouble?  Is this something you'd recommend people use, or should I avoid the option in the future?
2)  Should I regularly Defragment my disk?  The Rejuvenation program has now set my Defragmenter scheduler to come on every week (previously, the Defragmenter was turned off).  Is regular disk defragmentation something you would recommend?
3)  How is "Rejuvenation" different from a simple Backup + Defragmentation?  Is the Rejuvenation somehow more thorough or more effective?  I ask because of how painful the Rejuvenation process was this time around:  if it really doesn't do anything the Defragment tool doesn't, then I'd prefer to avoid it in the future.
     Sorry for the naive newbie questions(!) -- I just happen to love my E30 (which I specced out according to recommendations given to me on this forum, three years ago -- thank you for all the help!), and I'd like to maintain it properly.  =)
     Thank you in advance for any recommendations!
               - W