Extremely slow USB to USB transfer

[rizzyc]

150 kb/s transfer rate.
I have a 1.5 TB (exFat 4) hard drive hooked up to my Pi, I wanted to transfer a file from that hard hard drive to a 16 gig (FAT32) USB stick. Both devices were plugged into the Pi directly (no hub was used).

I tried transferring a 8 gig file from my HD to my USB stick and the transfer rates were abysmally slow. Around 150 kb/s. I thought this would be the fastest way to transfer the files. Is this some limitation on the FAT32 partion? My 1.5 TB is formatted as the default linux partition.

On a side note, i was able to SFTP files from my Pi to my Macbook over the network at almost 1 MB/second, but I thought the USB to USB should have been much faster.