Alpha update progress slow

I'm updating to an alpha version (because of http://community.screen-scraper.com/node/2298) and the progress is extremely slow. I ran the update on my laptop and it took a minute or two. Following the same steps on a server that has a much faster and reliable connection the progress bar only reached 10% after 2 hours. I tried the update on another server and it was slightly faster, but nothing like it should be. I'm not sure how to trouble shoot an issue like this. Is there a method to log this and get more details to you?

Also, is there another method I can use to update the servers? For example can I take the download from a current installation and copy it over?

Thanks, Jeremy