Backups to USB External Hard Drive

Here is a summary.
I have a Western Digital USB External Hard Drive. It came with the Dantz Retrospect 6.5 backup program. I also have Norton Ghost 2003 bought separately.
I can Backup or create Clones of files on my internal hard drive using Retrospect at rates that average around 300MB per minute. (The rate varies during a session from perhaps 100 to over 600MB per minute.)
Using Ghost, however, the rate is only a steady 28-29 MB per minute for Cloning and 36-37MB per minute for Backups. That means over 7 hours to transfer all files on my hard drive if I use Ghost. (Of course an incremental or differential backup takes less time, but the transfer rate remains the same.)

The hardware set up, cabling, etc. is exactly the same in each case. The files being transferred are the same. The only difference is which backup program (software) I use.
Can any one suggest a way to get Ghost to transfer files more efficiently? Is there a setting somewhere I am overlooking?

P.S. I can supply more data if needed, but I have tried to keep this short. There is a time in the Ghost backup/clone setup when I can choose to use no USB drivers, or USB1.1 or USB2 drivers. I find that Ghost will not even work when I chose either of the latter two. (I can supply details on that, if desired.) So I suspect that drivers are part of the limitation. Dantz offers no choice of using different drivers, and I assume is using USB2 since all my equipment is for USB2.

 

Jim - no real clue on Ghost since I don't use it but you might pick up some useful information from
Ghost compatibility with USB devices on the Symantec site. They include a link to a list of devices that do USB2 speed with your version of the app.

 

Newt and PeteC--Thanks. The various Symantec articles imply that I should be able to use USB1.1 or 2 with Ghost 2003.
"Cloning to or from a USB hard drive or other external device

Symantec Ghost 8.x and Norton Ghost 2003
Symantec Ghost 8.x and Norton Ghost 2003 support USB 1.1 and USB 2 connections for cloning operations that work with an external storage device such as an external USB hard drive.

For this type of cloning operation, use a Ghost Virtual Partition or the Standard Ghost Boot Disk. The option "USB Devices" is available only in the Symantec Ghost 8.x and Norton Ghost 2003 versions of the Ghost Boot Wizard. "
I am going to have look into that Virtual Partition thing as well as PeteC's suggestion about degree of compression.

(The hardware compatibility list has no Western Digital USB External drives, but I think it was written some time ago.)