performance problems while copying large data

[Michael Bartlett <michael bartlett workshare com>]

hi all,

i run a lowish spec box as my gateway server and file server. i've just put
a 120GIG USB Mass Storage device in it and am busy copying about 15 gig of
data across to it (from my existing IDE which is on the same hdd that runs
the OS). my girlfriend, who is working from home is experiencing a lot of
disconnects on MSN messenger and performance problems with the network.

i tried pinging the box and noticed a large packet loss:
29 packets transmitted, 21 packets received, 27% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 49.4/230.7/604.9 ms

i understand that the box is doing a fair amount of disk work at the moment
- but surely this sort of performance degredation is a bit much!? is there
anything cunning i can do to try and improve this? 

if not, and i don't mean this as an attack at all (I've been a linux user
for about 5 years now and love it), does this prove that linux is not as
powerful and wonderful as we all think it is?

regards,
michael