Fast Copy a File from USB to ReadyNas

How is the USB drive formatted? I'm guessing NTFS since you mention connecting it to a laptop. The ReadyNAS performs exceptionally poorly when connected via USB to NTFS formatted drives. All of the speeds you quote even slower than I would expect though, assuming that I have understood you correctly i.e. 10-11 mb/s means 10-11 mega-bits per second which works out to be about 1.3 MB/s (mega-bytes per second). I'm also assuming that you have filled all 6 bays of your Ultra so it is capable of the maximum I/O performance.

USB 2.0 will limit the maximum attainable speed to about 25 MB/s (note mega-bytes not bits) and I would think that the Ultra 6 Plus should be able to reach that maximum rate for an EXT3 formatted USB drive, but probably is significantly lower for NTFS. For NTFS you are better off connecting the USB drive to your laptop (Windows has a higher performance NTFS driver than the ReadyNAS), then copying the file from the laptop to the ReadyNAS over a wired gigabit ethernet connection (make sure that the link is definitely running at 1Gb/s and not 100Mb/s). Decent gigabit ethernet can support up to 120MB/s over a Cat 5e or better cable so it shouldn't be the bottleneck here. If your laptop has an eSATA 2.0 connection then you should would only be limited by the performance of your laptop and USB drive and you could approach 90MB/s or higher. But if you only have USB 2.0 then you are not going to see much more than 25 MB/s.

Count your lucky stars you don't have an X6. It would take the best part of a week to copy a 2TB drive to the X6 via direct USB connection!