I was just attempting to help a client transfer files from an iMac to a new Windows computer (I didn't tell them to switch, they called me after buying the PC ).

Anyway, they had an average amount of data. About 20GB in docs, music, and other stuff, and about 200GB in photos. No big deal, I have some large flash drives. This is a mid-2011 iMac that they apparently never upgraded from Lion (so maybe that's the problem). It only has USB 2 ports. I'm using USB 3 flash drives.

The transfer speeds are SLOOOOOW. It was estimating 14GB of files taking 3 hours to finish. It took 800MB about 20 minutes. By my calculations, even with USB 2, 14GB of files should only take about 5 minutes.

Is it because the drives are FAT? Could the Mac just not like these particular drives? I haven't had problems on other PCs with these drives, and I'm not usually working on Macs. I'll admit they're just generic drives I picked up at the Micro Center checkout aisle. The branded ones.

I ended up having to take the whole iMac with me back to my place. I just got finished transferring 20GB to my Synology in about 5 minutes or less. Now I'll be exporting their iPhoto library and that should transfer pretty fast too. Still, would have been nice to not have to go back to the client a second time and get everything done in one visit.