External HDD very slow. Help!

Hello! I currently have a PS3 80gb model with 3.55 Kmeaw and multiman 1.16.12 installed. I have most of my backups on an external hdd(2TB Western Digital Elements). The problem is that whenever I copy, delete, set permission and check files on any games on the external drive with multiman, it would take a very long time to finish the operation. For example, it took me about forty mintues to backup WWE All Stars, forty minutes to check the files for split and another forty minutes to set access permission. Is this normal? Is the problem caused by usb 2.0, the 2tb drive being in fat32, multiman or the ps3 itself? Thanks:D

Depending on how many small files a game has is how long the operation can take. If it has mostly large files, it goes a lot quicker.

yea that does seem excessively long copy/check times, my 2tb external is just as fast as the ps3, but as chesh says games with a lot of files do take longer to transfer over, maybe try the new multiman 1.16.14 as it has some performance tweaks.