usb 2.0 speed prob?

[RonaldS]

i have my friends external hdd (1TB, which when connected to his lappy copies a 700mb movie from the external hdd to the lappy, at around 25mb/s) but when I try to copy a movie from the hdd to my comp, it transfers at only 5mb/s?

My ports are 2.0 and I have also enabled write caching (instead of optimizing for safe removal), so why does it go so slow?

 

[RonaldS]

Well, I started the comp in safe mode and it copies faster (b/w 200-400 mb/s for the first 2 seconds) and then it finally comes down to around 22-26 mb/s for the rest.
But why doesn't this work in the normal start up mode