Originally Posted by Steve_God

In that case, your external hard drive must only be USB-1 itself as it doesn't complain about the slow speed.
Where as the memory stick (flash pen drive) will be a UBS-2 device and is complaining that it can't use all of the speed, as it is being used in a USB-1 slot.

(In short, USB-1 is the original and slower, USB-2 is faster but backwards compatible - and if using XP will moan about it)

The other option if to try and transfer a VERY large file (Several hundred Mb) and see how long it takes to send.