restore takes too long (5-6 hours!)

Problem with restore.

Acronis Tue Image 11 Home (build 8101)
on Thinkpad T61 with XP Professional SP2, @300 GB internal (c:) drive.

A backup w/ file exclusions takes about an hour. Verification perhaps
a little less.

A backup w/o file exclusions takes about about 2 hours. Verification
a little less.

However, when I tried to restore a backup (about 100GB) to a new
disk it easily took 5 - 6 hours!

I believe this is a known problem too and due to the use of old USB
drivers. Is there an easy patch to apply or free upgrade to a product
that does this in the same time it takes to backup and/or verify the
backup?

Thanks!