USB 2 Problem

[Shaggy]

Is it possible to test if I have USB 2 enabled ports?
The reason I ask is I have bought a USB2 External HD and it seems slow at data transfers.
According to my MB manual I have USB2 ports but just thought if there was a way of testing them?

Also is there any way I can measure the read/write speed of my External Drive?

Thanks

 

[karym6]

when you plug in the device, does a box pop up near the clock (the system try) advising you that it will not be operating as fast as it could? You can plug a USB2 HDD into a USB1.1 port and it will work most of the time, but you will get a box advising you that a hi-speed device has been plugged in.

 

[yicker124]

If you are using XP:
Go to Start/ControlPanel/System/ Hardware tab/ DeviceManager
Scroll down to USB; expand it with the + sign;
If you have USB2 you should have an entry there saying: USB enhanced host controller

 

[techquest]

Not aware of anything that can give you an actual real time xfer rate of the drive. But you can test the theoretical speed of xfer and write to and from the drive. But my guess is that is not what you are looking for.

karym6 is spot on with the info provided, as is yicker124.

What drive have you got and is it rated at 5400, 7400 or 10,000 rpm? Also is it NTFS or Fat32 format?

 

[oneman]

I would do a real world test. Assuming you are using WindowsXP. If you don't have a large file to hand, create one. E.g. to create a 100MB file

fsutil file createnew dummy.txt 100000000

Now use copy command to copy to the external drive and time how long it takes. Don't use explorer for doing this. Assume that e: is your external drive,

copy dummy.txt e:\

Then delete the file on your c: and do the reverse test

copy e:\dummy.txt c:

USB1 maximum transfer rate is 1.2MB per sec, USB2 is 48MB per second.

 

[karym6]

assuming that the USB2.0 device is operating in hispeed mode yes, however it is entirely possible for a device to be USB2.0 not to use this mode at all, the Nokia N91 is a very good example of this. This device was certified as USB2.0 but only operated in full-speed mode - which is the same speed as USB1.1