I use the drive to store all my photos and retrieve them when editing in Lightroom. I have not found the drive slow at all and read / write speeds are the same as for other external hard drives that I have.
To claim that the drive is so slow that it is effectively useless is definitely not normal for this disk and points to either a formatting or technical defect of the specific device in question.

Its good as a backup Harddrive for all my completed/archived projects, which is the way I use it - But get yourself an SSD if its speed you're looking for! Especially if editing video or photos straight off of your external drive.