Reading LTO-3 Tape SLOW With TAR

I have a DELL LTO-4 Drive, which is brand new, less than 2 weeks old.

I am trying to read an LTO-3 Tape, using TAR, and saving it to a USB harddrive.

The first time i read the tape i filled a 200GB usb harddrive overnight, and now im trying to read the tape again (because we originally thought there was only 172GB on the tape).

The problem now is, im using the exact same command to extract the tape but its going painfully slow. For example, over a 12 hour period it extracted 1.1GB

What could have caused this huge slow down.

Even if i just list the contents of the archive.... it still reads slow, so its not the device its saving too thats slow.

im using just tar -xf <tape device> to extract and tar -tvf <tape device> to list the contents... both take ages to read something though should be read in a few seconds.

The tape drive reads the first 3MB within 1/2 a second... then i hear the tape mech slow down.

This is using a mandriva livecd since the only machine which has this tape drive connected is our windows 2003 server (tape drive is on a SAS Controller which none of our linux machines have).

What could have possibly caused this slowdown if im using the same tape drive, tape, controllers & livecd and what could i do to speed this process up, as i need to read this tape within 12 hours while the server is not being used.