I know this may be a better known answer, but I'll post it to be sure people find it.

Let me explain. In kernels that support udev and automounting, flash storage and the like are usually mounted in /media/<Device>.
Well, one I day plugged up my MPIO 256MB mp3 player, to put music on, I find to put 3 songs on the disc it would cost me 30Min! That's ridiculous even for USB1.1. So I set out to find the answer.... I eventually discovered in /etc/fstab, the entries for your drives are appended to the end with long descriptive mouting options. In those options, delete the sync. This option was ment for devices like PDA's. After you do this, save your configuration, umount /media/<Device> then mount it again. Hazzah! A whole CD in less than 15 min as opposed to 3 songs for 30 min. Your life is no longer wasted.

-Adrien