I have experienced this as well, but in my case it took so long that it exceeded the time limit for scripts and caused the script to terminate. Here are my system details and a summary of my experience.
Gallery version = 2.2.4 core 1.2.0.6
PHP version = 5.2.0-8+etch11 apache2handler
Webserver = Apache/2.2.3 (Debian) PHP/5.2.0-8+etch11
Database = mysqli 5.0.32-Debian_7etch5-log...
2008-05-13 05:01:49 UTC in Gallery
