osm2pgsql ran a few hours for the first phase, then I let it run a couple days on the second phase (there are 3 phases IIRC).
I then calculated how long it would take to finish the second phase according to how much it had accomplished in those few days and I calculated that I would have to let my PC on until December 15 (it was back in September or October I think).
I'd be surprised if this were indeed the case, even on spinning disks. Did you use the pbf export? I can load it in two or three days using osm2pgsql on my home desktop (albeit with SSDs). On the £10k+ work server it loads in about 24 hours.
The issue with providing a Postgres dump is that people often want different things from the output data, and the choices made during the import might rule out certain uses.