Performance tests with USB thumb drive and a USB sata drive

Copied 4047503360 bytes (4GB) from external SATA drive to local SSD hard drive over USB
time cp Fedora-11-x86_64-DVD.iso ~
3:16 minutes
19.69 MB/sec


Copied same file back to external SATA over USB
cp ~/Fedora-11-x86_64-DVD.iso /Volumes/UNTITLED/
2:45 minutes
23.39 MB/sec


Read same file from SATA drive over USB
time cat /Volumes/UNTITLED/iso-install/Fedora-11-x86_64-DVD.iso > /dev/null
1:49 minutes
35.41 MB/sec


Read same file from SSD
time cat ~/Fedora-11-x86_64-DVD.iso > /dev/null
31 seconds
124.52 MB/sec


Copied 676411392 bytes (645MB) from external thumb to local SSD hard drive over usb
time cp /Volumes/4GB\ THUMB/KNOPPIX_V6.0.1CD-2009-02-08-EN.iso ~
42 seconds
15.36 MB/sec


Copied same file back to external SATA over USB
time cp ~/KNOPPIX_V6.0.1CD-2009-02-08-EN.iso /Volumes/4GB\ THUMB/KNOPPIX_V6.0.1CD-2009-02-08-EN.iso.2
1:24 minutes
7.68 MB/sec


Read same file from USB thumb drive
time cat /Volumes/4GB\ THUMB/KNOPPIX_V6.0.1CD-2009-02-08-EN.iso > /dev/null
31 seconds
20.81 MB/sec