Gaming USB 2.0 speed issues

[bwillb]

So heres one for ya... copying files FROM a USB mass storage device, I get a respectable 20mB/s. copying files TO a USB mass storage device, I get at best 4.75mB/s, usually far less. using a portable harddrive (with USB Y cable) transfer rates to the drive dip even below 1mB/s, sometimes as low at 100kB/s/
any ideas for a jumping off point to diagnose this oddity? Transfers work at 12mB/s+ on my netbook, but super slow on the desktop. The netbook is running Windows 7 Ultimate x86, and the desktop is running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (also tried with Win-Vista Ultimate x64 on desktop, same thing... so I'm guessing a hardware issue at this point)
motherboard is a Gigabyte GA 965G-DS3.


The real kicker is that updating my Logitech Harmony remote works great on my desktop but fails on the netbook XD

 

[seedvt]

Check in the BIOS (under Advanced Integrated Peripherals) to see if all the USB 2.0 functions are enabled. You might only have the USB 1.1 controller active and not the full 2.0.

 

[bwillb]

Check in the BIOS (under Advanced Integrated Peripherals) to see if all the USB 2.0 functions are enabled. You might only have the USB 1.1 controller active and not the full 2.0.

ah yes forgot to mention that I checked that, and all USB 2.0 options are indeed enabled.

oh boy, definitely looking like a hardware problem... now my computer isn't even fully powering the USB harddrive, it just sits there clicking like it can't spin up properly even with both usb connectors plugged in. yet the netbook can power and transfer with a single standard usb cable.

If I grab a PCI USB 2 or 3 expansion card from fry's that should work, right?

 

[bwillb]

Now I'm really confused. I took my 8gb flash drive and formatted it as NTFS. now explorer transfers are really fast on the PC (40MBps), and Wii backup Manager starts at about 50MBps for a few seconds and then it rapidly drops down to 4.5MBps like the speed this drive was getting as FAT32.