High Speed conversion?

I need some advice please.

I have a Dell w/service pk 2, 1.8 GHz, 768 RAM.

Today I bought a Seagate external hard drive. It works just fine but it's taking forever to transfer my files! I don't have a high speed (?) USB port. I do have high speed internet...don't laugh, I'm still learning...

I am pretty handy at assembling things but have no idea how to put a high speed USB port on this puter or where to buy one. Would someone please help me. Where do I get one and which one to I buy? Is it easy to install?

Help! Please.
Thanks.

 

u probably need a USB 2.0, also see what ur harddrive speed is and post here...u can get a PCI USB 2.0 at www.newegg.com (they are a good site, i built my pc from there ).....

Heres a link to a pretty nice one.... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817111751

just get it and install it in one of ur PCI slots, its that simple

hope this solves your problems!!

 

Thanks for the info! They don't cost much, eh? Where would I find the speed of my hard drive?

 

the external drive only has the high speed (USB 2.0) port, however it is backwards compatible with your slower (USB 1.1) port that you are currently using.

As soon as you can get a USB 2.0 card like the one mentioned above, the drive will be using USB 2.0

just to give you an idea of speeds, USB 1.1 has a maximum speed of 10Mbit/s which is 1.25 MegaBytes per second.

USB 2.0 has a maximum of 480Mbit/s, which is 60MB/s.

thats a nice speed increase and well worth the upgrade.

one question I have for you-- does your External drive also have Firewire support? (also called IEE1394)

if so, you may want to look at a card with both USB 2.0 and Firewire like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815124029

Firewire comes in two forms, IEE1394a (like on the card above) and IEE1394b

a is rated at 400Mbit/s (50MB)
b is rated at 800Mbit/s (100MB)

Firewire is superior because it has a higher sustained data transfer rate, meaning that even though USB 2.0 has a 60MB/s compared to firewire A's 50MB/s, it will take longer to transfer the same amount of data.

Just something nice to know, and you may want/need Firewire in the future

 

umm look at the box it came, the manual....should tell u the RPM's somewhere!!!!

 

Not a big deal, but it actually has a maximum speed of 12 Mbps and not 10.

Also, on XP you need SP1 or 2 as XP on it's own does NOT support USB 2.0.

With Windows 9x you have to rely on supplied drivers.

 

You guys/gals are awesome!

Thanks for the info, I just ordered with Newegg and can't wait for it to get here!

Thanks!

 

Just to make sure... When you plug the hard drive in, does it pop up with a message saying, "This device will work faster if you plug it into a high-speed USB port"? If so, then yeah, the USB 2.0 card will speed it up. Just thought I'd ask that since it seems that everyone else just assumed that you actually have USB 1.1 ports.

 

Nobody assumed a thing.

The author themself said that they don't have high speed USB 2.0.

 

Yes, when I plug in my MP3, my new hard drive, I get that ,"...won't perform at optimal level..." message.

Thanks for all the help!

 

To see if you have USB 2.0, go to Device Manager, and under Universal Serial Bus Controllers you should see the work "Enhanced".

That's assuming you have the correct motherboard/chipset drivers installed.