Really slow transfer speeds HDD > USB and HDD > ESATA

I couldn't find another thread on this.

With help I have been able to start to move files from my HDD to an external USB. The problem is that it is painfully slow - it's just taken an hour (well 57mins) to transfer a 13GB file and that's a looooong was short of the theoretical speed for USB 2.0. I bet I could beat that with a LAN transfer.

I'm currently trying to move the same file over ESATA and it looks like it will transfer only a few minutes quicker - looks like it might get it down to 50 mins.

Is this a known issue, or am I doing something wrong?

Is anyone getting closer to what they would expect?

To update.

The same file took 50 minutes via esata and has just taken 40 minutes via wireless FTP.

I can't believe that it is quicker over wireless FTP?!

From experience I know if I used a wired connection and did 2 simultaneous FTP transfers I would get 11/12 MiB/s, which would make it more than twice as fast to transfer by FTP.

I can't fathom...