Copying files from an external HD extremely slow!

Hi everybody.
Thank’s to read this message.
I’ve a MacBook Pro 13” (mid 2009) core2duo 2.26 Mhz whit 2GB ram and running Snow Leopard 10.6.2
The system runs perfect until i try to copy something from an external drive, takes a lot of time to copy it, for example a 600 mb file takes almost 15 minutes, thats ridiculous, the problem is only when the info comes from an external drive and not from the machine to an external drive.
I’ve tried whit tree different external HD and cables, whit four different USB flash memories, happened the same whit the SD slot and whit the CD drive, the size of the files or the content doesn’t matter is slow whit anything, I thought in the external drives format (FAT32 most of them) but happened the same whit the Time Machine disk whit HFS+ format, yesterday i copy a 4.5 GB folder whit videos and photos from time machine HD and took 4, yes 4 hours!!
Is a serious problem because while is copying a file uses all the machine resources and i can’t do anything else until finish writing the file. Also i think is not an Snow Leopard problem, cause i tried to install Windows XP whit Bootcamp and in the part when the system copy files from the CD to the HDD happened the same, just took extremely lot of time and i had cancel it.
I already reset the PRAM, repaired the hard disc and made a test whit the Hardware test tool in the Snow Leopard disc but can’t find something wrong.
Well, thats the problem, any idea or comment is appreciate, thanks a lot

Hi Eww, thanks a lot for your answer
Thats a good idea, but why happens the same when i'm out of Snow Leopard, i mean installing windows xp goes very slow.
I think should be something that controls the in and out information flow, but i don't know.
Any other idea??

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both external drives came preformatted for Windows but I erased each and reformatted them for Mac before using them.
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my original iTunes folder on the first drive contained all my iTunes files, as that, also, was the destination folder that was linked via Advanced preferences.
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in Preferences I have both boxes checked (copy files" and "organize") that deal with copying iTunes files.
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when I look at the "missing" files in iTunes they have the small exclamation mark that indicates the file is missing, but when I locate it through iTunes it doesn't copy the file on the old external drive to the new one. It just plays it having found the file on the old drive.
originally I had to make the iTunes folder on the old drive into a shared folder using the Get info window after either a software upgrade or an OS upgrade (I can't remember which, it was several years ago). For some reason the upgrade changed the preferences of that folder to a Read Only folder and after researching the problem found the only way to keep using the drive was to make the folder a shared one. I can't remember why and I apologise for that but it was a long time ago.; I can tell you that at the time it was necessary.
thanks again for your time; I have a good working knowledge of iTunes and Macs in general so I truly believe I have done everything according to how it should be done,, but clearly I've done something wrong!

Copying files from an external HD extremely slow!

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