Slow Transfer of Seagate FW800 Drive

I purchased a Seagate Free Agent Desk drive today with the Firewire 800 connections. I'm trying to do my initial Time Machine backup on it, but it is taking forever and I'm wondering if it is operating at a normal speed. Maybe someone who knows the math or knows a bit more about data transfer rates can help me out.

I started at 9.5 gigs transferred.

9.5gb - 10.5gb = 2min 29sec
10.5gb - 11.5gb = 1min 51sec
11.5gb - 12.5gb = 31sec (fastest I've seen it do)
12.5gb - 13.5gb = a whopping 3min 28sec
13.5gb - 14.5gb = 1min 25sec

Average transfer speed of 1gb every 1.95 minutes

Total time to transfer 5gb = 9min 46sec

Is this normal? As you can plainly see I have way too much time on my hands if I'm able to sit and watch data transfer....

I got 663MB transferred in 21 seconds. Isn't it like 8Mb to one MB? If that's the case it'd be 252Mb/s...nowhere near the 7-hundred-something I'm supposed to get with FW800. Perhaps my math is off though.

computergek80 said:

use google: http://www.google.com/search?&rls=en&q=480+megabits+in+megabytes&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Also, I've looked at the seagate FW800 drive, and I was under the impression it wat SATA 1.5 Gbit/s. I know this is still bloody fast though.
Maybe it's the rpm?

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Judging by Google...my math was correct. Were you trying to prove a point? Trust me, I spent a good amount of time searching the internets.

computergek80 said:

No, I was thinking of reasons for slow transfer speeds. Maybe the bus or the rpm of the HD? Could it be the cache?
I'm no expert, and I'm also curious as to what the weason might be.

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I'm not sure the specs of the HD as far as cache goes. My Time Machine transfer is still in progress at this point. 70gb down. I suppose that's not too bad. 70gb per hour. Perhaps I was just expecting too much from the little guy.