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View Full Version : USB 1.0 vs USB 2.0 and other stuff


Longwatcher
15th of July 2003 (Tue), 14:09
I just discovered something really nifty about my new computer (although annoying at the same time).

It came with a 6-in-1 card reader, which I thought was hooked directly to a PCI card slot or maybe an IDE slot so it should have gone faster. And in fact it did as compared to loading from camera or from my picture pad via USB 1.0. (basically about 2 minutes instead of 4 minutes per card). Plus the card is loaded directly into the drive; very convienent when at home. The time to load the card into the picture pad itself is normally about 2-3 minutes, so until I got the 6-in-1 it was faster to load the CF cards into the picture pad and then dump all at once to the computer instead of using the camera connection one card at a time.

However, I recently got the USB2.0 adapter for the picture pad and tried it out on my new computer. I discovered that the front USB ports (part of the 6-in-1 device) are USB1.0. I learned this because my computer warned that I had a USB 2.0 device plugged into a USB 1.0 port. However, I knew my computer had USB 2.0 ports so I tried the back ones. Way faster. What used to take 4 minutes per card now takes about 15 seconds.

So unless my computer is sitting right there, I am back to downloading my CF cards to the picture pad.

The annoying part is I was under the impression that all of my USB ports were 2.0 capable. I also have 2 firewire ports, one on the back and one on the front (again as part of the 6-in-1). So am very curious if one will go faster then the other, but don't have any firewire devices to try it out with.

The above experience was similiar to the one where I thought my lenses were autofocusing plenty fast, but a friend thought they were really slow. And then I got the 16-35L and it was way faster and the 50/1.4 is faster still.

Learn something new every day or so.

Thought I would share

Longwatcher
28th of July 2003 (Mon), 09:56
Update:
I discovered this weekend that all of my USB ports are 2.0 capable. I also discovered that no matter which port I used I had to plug the Picture Pad in, let it register, and then unplug it and plug it in a different port.
Apparently the first time I plug it in the computer defaults the USB ports to 1.0, the second time it sets them to 2.0. Kind of strange, but easy to handle.

USB 2.0 is much faster then USB 1. Downloading this weekend's photo shoots (about 8gig) took less then 6 minutes. It used to take 45+ minutes. Much improved.

Laziferous
29th of July 2003 (Tue), 06:05
IEEE 1394 ports are rated at about 400mb/s... and USB 2.0 are rated at about 480mb/s. I have USB 1, and 1394 ports on my computer. My card reader is USB 1... so you already know what my rate of transfer is... slow. About 12mb/s http://users.pandora.be/eforum/emoticons4u/obscene/eck03.gif

I only have one firewire compatible device... and it's not my card reader http://e4u.consoleradar.com/crazy/1196.gif