Slow performance with Seagate External USB Drive

I have a 250GB Seagate external USB. The external drive is not a pocket drive and it has its own power supply. When I first got the drive (a few months ago) I mounted, paritioned and formatted the drive without any problems. I backed up my Mac HD with the included Bounce Back Express software and it took a few hours with around 60GB of data. I also updated the files a few times over the last few months with no problems.
All of the sudden my Powerbook stopped mounting the Seagate drive when I plugged it in. I went into disk utility and ended up reformatting the drive (with Mac OS extended) and then the Powerbook mounted the drives. However, now when I try to backup files to the drive it is extremely slow. It is only transferring files at around 25 MB per minute. It will take well over 24 hours to back up the drive at this rate when it used to take a few hours.
Seagate's website is no help, all they say is that Powerbook G4's have USB 1.1, not USB 2 which is why it is slow. I know this is not true.
Does anyone have any idea why file transfer to the drive is suddenly so slow?
Thanks.
Powerbook G4 15-inch Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Could you describe the cabling which connects the drive to your Mini, how the drive is powered, and what else is connected via usb to your Mini? Thanks!

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