database - What is the best hack for importing large datasets into PostGIS?

I have to import large Shapefiles (> 1 million records) into PostGIS, and I have been wondering about the best way to do it.

In my question I used the word "hack", instead of tool, on purpose because I think this is not so much a matter of which tool, but which set of steps, or configuration settings to use. So far, I have tried the SPIT plugin (QGIS), the shp2pgsql Postgis tool and the GDAL ogr2ogr tool. You can view my full review on this post. So far, I find all of them really unresponsive, when dealing with a large dataset. I was wondering if someone experienced a similar issue, and if you could share something about the approach.

Answer

I made a test for you:

• PostgreSQL 9.3


• PostGIS 2.1


• Windows 7


• i7 3770@3.4 GHz processor


• GDAL 2.0-dev 64-bit


• shapefile of 1.14 million polygons, file size 748 MB

Ogr2ogr command:

ogr2ogr -f PostgreSQL PG:"dbname='databasename' host='addr' port='5432' user='x' password='y'" test.shp --config PG_USE_COPY YES -nlt MULTIPOLYGON

Total time:1 minute 30 sec