copying files between ext3 and fat32 is slow

[Kamaraju Kusumanchi <kamaraju@bluebottle.com>]

I have a usb drive which contains two partitions. One partition is ext3, the 
other is fat32. I used the fat32 to copy the files from windows XP and the 
speed is around 10MBps. When I moved this data from fat32 to ext3, I noticed 
that the speed is around 300KBps. I am wondering why is it so slow to copy 
files between ext3, fat32? Does it have something to do with my harddrive or 
my configuration or in general copying across partitions is very slow?

any ideas?
thanks
raju

-- 
Kamaraju S Kusumanchi
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/kk288/
http://malayamaarutham.blogspot.com/