Very slow copy and rm speeds

I've seen other postings about slow copy processes upon upgrading to Snow Leopard. However, none of the replies seem to address the situations I am experiencing. First, copy times between my MacBook Pro (2 Ghz, 2GB, 100GBHD, 15" - the first MBP introduced), and external USB2 Lacie HD have become very slow (1 hour for 4-6 files totalling ~4GB). Curiously, sometimes the same size transfer occurs in 3-4 minutes.  I recently upgraded to SL from Tiger, and the Tiger times were in the 3-4 minute envelop. The external HD is a 1TB Poulton Lacie, with over half the disc free.  My MBP HD has about 20GB free, and only the Finder, mail, occaisionally xcode, and occaisionally a browser, (either Safari or Firefox) are running during the transfer.  The same sometimes occurs with only the Finder and the activity monitor running. The USB is connected directly to the MBP. So, in summary, the ext HD is directly connected, half empty, there is room on the internal HD, and the memory is not particularly burdened with other processes.  The activity monitor slows less than half the CPU capability being used.
Secondly,  another problem occurs using the unix secure erase, rm -Pr.  It is very slow since upgrading to SL from Tiger. The finder's secure erase is too slow to use.
Any thoughts about why on either?  Right now, I'm wishing that I stayed with Tiger.  Thanks.

I suggest looking at your logs in Console.app to see if anything unusual is happening during the long file copies.
The SMART status isn't that useful. If it says the drive is dead, the drive it dead. If it says the drive is "verified", the drive could still be dead. A good indicator of this is if file copies take an hour instead of 3 minutes.
Is this the original hard drive in that machine? If so, I'm surprised it has made it this long. Notebook hard drives typically start failing at three years of age. You might not notice it until you do a major reoriganization of your files' organization on the disk - such as installing a new operating system.
I compared Finder's secure erase with rm and they seem more or less equivalent.
I think your internal hard drive is just failing. That's all.

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