LOL Hi mate... actually I sorted this problem just this last week (proper embarrassed). I had a 4 port USB hub plugged into one of my USB2 ports and it turns out to be either not completely compatible with OS X or only USB1.1. Anyway with any USB2 compatible storage device plugged directly into one of the USB2 ports they will show correctly in the system profiler (haven't tried the transfer rate yet but will report back).

I just can't believe it's taken me this long.... nevermind.

Update: Have transferred 2.8 Gig onto a laptop HD in an external SATA enclosure in 2 minutes or less! So it's solved for me but i also found out that I needed to use a lead specifically for H/D's for it to work at all, fortunately i have a nice long lead that reaches round the front of the machine np. I have a single port USB extension lead that enables USB flash drives to show up and work with the USB2 ports but the transfer rate is much slower (though not as slow as 1.1) 2.8 Gig in 6-8 minutes - just found out it's the same transfer rate with the device directly pugged into the USB2 port even though they both say data transfer rates of up to 480M/b per second Maybe the Kingston data traveller is just a slower piece of h/w... i dunno. Very happy with the external h/d performance though.

Further update: I also have a 2.5" LaCie h/d This has it's own built-in USB lead. This works with the single port extension lead and the speed is just about the same as the other h/d so it must be the flash drive or transfer rates are generally slower for all flash drives... i dunno.

Further info: the Data traveller transfers at the same speed on my Inspiron, it is worth pointing out that the Data traveller is formatted in FAT32 and the external H/d's are HFS+

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Foxconn 975X7AB intel core 2 duo 2.4ghz 4 gig ram Snow leopard 10.6.4 + Leopard 10.5.8
Dell Inspiron 1525 intel core 2 duo 2.4ghz 4 gig ram Snow Leopard 10.6.4