If anybody out there is running NetWare 6.5 and was disappointed with the slow performance of external USB drives, I have good news.
Service Pack 8, that has just recently come out of public beta, fixes the performance problem.
NetWare 6.5 is also known as Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 (the name change was a result of their new distribution of OpenSUSE server software.)
Performance numbers:
Backup Awareness