rsync 10 times slower in Etch than in Sarge!

[Rodolfo Medina <rodolfo.medina@gmail.com>]

I do my daily backup with the following command:

 $ rsync -vr --delete Mail News /mnt/sda

(where `sda' is the pendrive), and I've calculated that in my new Debian
Etch system the process is about 10 times slower than it was in Sarge!
It is the same with both my desktop PC and my laptop.  In /etc/fstab I
have the following entry:

 /dev/sda        /mnt/sda 	vfat    sync,rw,user,noauto  0       0

.  The backup that would take only a few minutes now takes almost one
hour!  Can anybody please explain this strange phenomena?

Thanks
Rodolfo