Pathetically slow USB transfer/copy speeds rMBP

Just take it back, I've used windows XP systems with core to duo's that do 700mb faster than 15 minutes there is obviously something hogging your bandwidth, or slowing your rMBP down, find out what it is... cause clearly you seem to be 1 of very few having this problem. It doesn't suddenly mean Phil is lying simply because you and your macbook are experiencing issues.

 

No point returning it since the hardware clearly works, as demonstrated by windows in parallels.

 

Honestly, he/she can just call apple, I am sure they can figure something out.

 

700MB should take about 23s over USB2, so 3 such files should take just a little more than a minute.

Which is pretty much inline with my experiences with my rMBP: 30-35MB/s for USB2 and 180-200MB/s for USB3.

 

Most of the movies I download (~800MB) take about 5 minutes to transfer over USB 2 on Mac and PC. OP, try a USB 3 drive. Just because you're using a port that supports 3.0 doesn't mean your 2.0 will achieve those speeds.

 

something must be wrong with the drive, thats way to slow i can transfer 3(700MB) files to a cheapo USB flash drive i have in like 2 minutes tops

 

Yeah mine is blazingly slow for some odd reason. I don't have a retina yet but I'm just quoting my other computer.

 

Using a usb2 external hdd, I transferred 7gigs in 25 min. Contents included home movies, pictures, documents and music. Over usb3 I get about 100/100 r/w. Your numbers don't sound right. Take it in.

 

Have you tried a different brand of USB drive besides the other two? It is entirely possible (and pretty common) that both drives' write speeds are lower than the read speeds.

Seeing as how this isn't a widely reported issue, I'd lean more towards your USB drives being faulty rather than an actual OS X issue.