Copy transfer rate much faster to /mnt/disk1 than /mnt/user - no parity

I'm copying data from a USB2 thumb drive connected to my unRAID box using MC.  Copying to /mnt/disk1/TV is MUCH FASTER than copying to /mnt/user/TV.  28 MB/s to disk1 vs 13MB/s to /mnt/user.  I have no parity drive.  I have a cache drive but I have instructed the system not to use the cache drive for shares.  I'm using unRAID 5.0.5.

Is this expected behaviour?

I'm also having extremely slow network transfer rates, 8 MB/s, but I haven't started debugging my gigabit network yet.  I plugged in the USB drive to avoid the network.

(Unrelated question: once I do enable the parity drive, is my data protected if I copy to /mnt/disk1 instead of /mnt/user ?)

I am surprised that the difference is that high, but it is possible for a couple of reasons

• You are removing a level of indirection when writing files
  
• When creating a new file unRAID does not need to look at any other drives before deciding where to put the file thus speeding up file creates.
  

Are you copying large files or lots of small ones?  If small ones then the second reason Is probably dominating.

Large files.

(Unrelated question: once I do enable the parity drive, is my data protected if I copy to /mnt/disk1 instead of /mnt/user ?)

Yes.