Question about USB 2.0 on a USB 1.1 computer

[bjornkeizers]

Hi all

I just bought an Archos Qdisk 60 gb external harddrive. I'm having a bit of a problem with it.

You see, it requires a USB 2.0 compatible port, which my laptop doesn't have. [I just returned from vacation, a 7 hour car ride, so my brain wasn't working all that great just then :D ] I do have two 1.1 ports.

It installs just fine, but I get the following error:

"A fast USB device was connected to a slow USB hub"

[I'm using a dutch version of win XP home so I'll have to translate]

It shows up in config screen OK and as "working correctly"; however I can't access the drive.

I've mailed Archos about it, but I'd like a quick fix as much as the next person. Now I'm assuming I can't really fix this, and I don't want to return it as there aren't any 1.1 compatible external drives on sale there or anywhere else for that matter.

Now, my question is, can I connect one of those external USB 2.0 hubs to my laptop to get it to work with 2.0 compatible devices? Will that effectively change my USB to 2.0?

Any help would be greatly appreciated

[racerx]

Afraid that in order to get a USB 2.0 port, you need to get yourself a USB 2.0 PC card (PCMCIA). THAT will give you a USB 2.0 port. A USB connection is only as fast as they slowest port, which in the scenario you proposed, would be the 1.1 port on your laptop.

You can probably get a 2.0 card for under US$50. YMMV depending on your local.

There are some things that are 2.0 that you can get to work on 1.1 ports, but a hard disk is definately not one of them! :) Good luck.

[bjornkeizers]

I pretty much thought so.

I just phoned a local computing store, and they have a Sitecom PCMCIA card with 2 USB 2.0 ports on sale for 59,95 Euro

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000A03L1/qid=1059835314/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_1_3/026-9961621-2658807

Anyone have any experience with this one? Good? Crap? OK?

[GoldKey]

I have been able to use a usb 2.0 maxtor drive in the 1.1 port on my laptop. It is slow though and I ended up buying a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card and that works great.

[[email protected]]

You should be able to use the drive, but at the slower speed. If you cannot then there is a problem that needs to be resolved. either a driver issue, or whatever. USB 2.0 is backwards compatable with 1.1
:wink:

[Jacob]

You should be able to use the drive, but at the slower speed. If you cannot then there is a problem that needs to be resolved. either a driver issue, or whatever. USB 2.0 is backwards compatable with 1.1
:wink:

This is right.

Data transfer will go at the rate of the slower device - either the port or the device.

You'd only need to get a USB 2.0 card if you want to take advantage of the higher USB 2.0 speeds.

[bjornkeizers]

Data transfer will go at the rate of the slower device - either the port or the device.

You'd only need to get a USB 2.0 card if you want to take advantage of the higher USB 2.0 speeds.

Yup. I do know a few things about USB. Unfortunately, I don't keep up to date on USB developments as much as I'd like to :D I actually own several USB 2.0 compatible devices, like a joystick, joypad, MP3 player.. but none *required* USB 2.0. I didn't think to check if this was the case with this piece of kit as well :D

Oh well. The store is holding the Sitecom PCMCIA 2-port USB hub [geez, that's a mouth full!] so that should solve my problem just nicely. One question though. PCMCIA always seemed rather slow to me.. but I'm no expert on that either. All I hear is USB 2.0: 40 times faster.. Is that true, even when using it through a PCMCIA adapter as opposed to a built in port?

[GoldKey]

Have not done an actual speed test. But it felt downright zippy when hooked into the USB 2.0 card over using the built in 1.1 port.

[bjornkeizers]

WOOHOO! I got the f***ing thing to work, finally!

I picked up the card, installed it without problems, hooked up the drive and.. nothing happened.

I unhooked it, rebooted a dozen times, uninstall, reinstall, nothing worked. It did show up as working correctly in Config screen, but wouldn't show its ugly face in My Computer..

So I went back to config screen, hardware, checked the drive status.. Not Initialised.

Since I know absolutely nothing about drives, I checked the other one as well.. It was On Line. So I figured mine should have to be that as well. So I looked up "initialising" in my windows help, and found "Computer management" which did show the drive but as offline. So, I initialised it, still didn't show up. Now I'm partitioning and formatting it and it just showed up in My Computer!!

Not bat for someone who's never done it before and knew nothing about it huh? Guess all that nerd blood in me does have its advantages. :D