USB Disk access "Extremely" Slow

I am unable to use my network disk essentially because the disk access write/read times are SO SLOW...I am better off running backups by connecting my disk directly to the compter. Does anyone else have this problem?
It took 5 Minutes to read my Music directory; connected directly via the same cable it takes seconds.
What gives?
Any help would be appreciated.

I got my AE and Seagate FreeAgent Pro hard drive
yesturday and I have the exact same problem.
If I hook up the drive to the computer directly it is
very very fast.
If I hook it up to the AE it takes about 2 hours to
move a couple fils totaling 2 gigs over ETHERNET!
If I transfer the same files over the same network
between 2 computers the speed is much much faster.
Is this normal or some nasty firmware bug. It almost
feels like the AE is using USB 1.0 for some reason.
You guys are funny. How about checking out the specs of USB 2.0 and 802.11g/n?
Go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.11g#802.11g
and here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_2.0
Firewire vs. USB tests are here:
http://www.g4tv.com/techtvvault/features/39129/USB20_Versus_FireWirepg3.html
802.11g:
Release Date Op. Frequency Data Rate (Typ) Data Rate (Max) Range (Indoor)
June 2003 2.4 GHz 19 Mbit/s 54 Mbit/s ~35 meters
802.11n:
Release Date Op. Frequency Data Rate (Typ) Data Rate (Max) Range (Indoor)
Mid 2008 5 GHz and/or 2.4 GHz 74 Mbit/s 248 Mbit/s (2 stream) ~70 meters
Bottom line: 802.11n typical is 74Mbps, 802.11g typical is 19Mbps. USB 2.0 typical is 50Mbps.
On the average, you should expect your speed to drop by over 50% when connecting the USB drive to AESB using an 802.11g device. If your device is 802.11n, then you should have pretty much similar performance.
Now, if you increase the distance from your base station, or you put walls in between, the performance of 802.11g will go down "dramatically", all the way to 2-3Mbps, easy. Not so for 802.11n, which behaves much better at longer distances.

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