Kali 1.09 Live USB w/ Persistence (Speed Issues)

[prints]

Hello all!
Been a user of Kali and Backtrack for a while now, haven't really ever had the need to ask any questions about it. I was using 1.05 for quite a while, but I needed persistence, so I downloaded 1.09. Well, I created my "sdb3" partition, created the conf, verified it as working. The only thing is that now the system runs so slowly that it's virtually impossible for me to do anything. Even pulling up gparted takes ages. Now, I know that RAM is alot faster than my USB stick, but is that the reason it's so slow? I mean, it's kind of useless like this. I tried doing an apt-get upgrade; and it took hours. I looked around but I couldn't find anybody with speed issues on a persistent live install, so I'm here! ;)

Here's what I'm working with:
Kali 1.09 AMD64
16GB PNY USB (2.0) disk
on an old Vaio Dual 2GHz, 4GB RAM

Oh yeah, my persistent 'spot' is a 6.3 gb ext4 partition, sdb3.

I'm just assuming I've done something wrong. Any info is appreciated!

Thanks!

EDIT:

Let me add that Kali operates fine in normal live mode (w/o persistence)

I'm assuming since nobody replied that I'm missing something obvious? I understand that it's not gonna be 'fast' per se, I just don't see why I get such a reduction in speed when going persistent.

[Arvandor]

I had the exact same problem (also, don't run apt-get upgrade, I'm pretty sure it can break things when used with a persistent live boot.) I don't know why exactly it ran so slow, but someone from my school suggested a USB 3.0 drive as a fix. So, I went out, grabbed myself a 3.0 Drive, installed Kali with persistence, and it absolutely screams, even when plugged into a 2.0 port. Much fast. Don't know the mechanics behind the problem or fix, but that worked for me.