Are you sure that you've got it hooked up at USB 2.0 speeds? Cables,
connector on the computer (as well as the external case) should all be 2.0.
As well as ensuring your system has the USB 2.0 drivers correctly. Seems to
me some OS's didn't support 2.0 natively, and you had to add on the right
drivers.
According to my math, here's the figures based on the theoretical maximums:
USB 1.1
12Mb/s = 1.5MB/s
6,000MB/1.5MB/s = 4000 seconds
4000 seconds = 66.67 minutes
USB 2.0
480Mb/s = 60MB/s
6,000MB/60MB/s = 100 seconds
100 seconds = 1.67 minutes
Seems you're much closer to the 1.1 speeds than the 2.0 speeds. Here's a
review of an external USB 2.0 HD, which averaged 26MB/s transfer:
http://www.tech-mods.net/modules.php?name=Reviews&file=viewreview&op=newreview&id=61
For 60GB, that would have taken about 4 minutes to copy.
Clint