Which USB port should i use?

Question

Does it matter? My laptop has 6 USB ports and i have an external hard drive i connect to it...The laptop says that its a high speed device and to optimize performance i should use a high speed port,,,then it says to click the bubble to see a list of high speed usb ports. I click it and it just list off the ports but it doesnt let me know which drive it is( i currently use the F:\ to plug in my external ) so...is this some kind of error or does the port i use matter( if so how do i find out which to use?)

Answer 1

High speed would be the USB 2.0 interface. These are probobly the ports that you have on your laptop as the 1.0 interface is quite outdated. The other high speed port that it could be talking about would be Firewire. Think of it this way if you have never heard of firewire. The speeds you can get out of a firewire cable compared to USB 2.0 is like comparing a VCR with Blu-Ray. Its EXTREMELY fast, so it may be referring to that.



If your external does not have a Firewire port, then it only means to make sure its in a USB 2.0 or SATA slot (laptops don't generally have one on the outside)



So there is no error and every port will do the same thing. I recommend, however, that you pick one and stick to using only that port, otherwise the drive will notice its plugged in to something new and may want to install drivers when you already have them on your machine.



Hope I helped.

Answer 2

Some USB ports can be USB-1.1. Other can be USB-2. You need to use the USB-2 ports.



Often, when having 6 USB-ports, there are ONLY 2 USB-2 ports. Older laptops might have only USB 1.1 ports (all slow). But generally, laptops with 6 USB ports aren't that old. So probably you have 2 USB-2 ports and 4 USB-1.1 ports.



On my computer too, there's not much useful information when i click on the USB configuration.



Somebody wrote: "High speed would be the USB 2.0 interface. These are probobly the ports that you have on your laptop as the 1.0 interface is quite outdated."

USB-1.0 is quite outdated, indeed. But USB-1.1 is not. Yes, compared with USB-2 it's very slow and outdated. But since customers can't see the difference between USB-1.1 and USB-2 ports, many manufacturers still used USB-1.1 ports many years after USB-2 was introduced (and because an USB-2 port was cheaper to integrate on the motherboard). But if your laptop is not older than 5 years, probably 2 (or indeed all 6 - but then the notice you get would not be logical) ports are USB-2, the others are USB-1.1.



Also: firewire=3200Mbit/sec. max, and USB-2 =480Mbit/sec. max (USB-1.1=12Mbit/sec.). (All design speeds - in realilty, it's slower.) But... Your external harddisk probably wouldn't get much (if any) benefit from a 3200Mbit port, since that harddisk itself can't even get closely to 480Mbit/sec, so connecting to a 3200Mbit port doesn't give any performance boost (except that it uses less CPU-cycles).

So, any remark to connect the disk to a firewire port would be rather silly. Although Windows is often rather silly: not in this case.



Somebody wrote: "The other high speed port that it could be talking about would be Firewire."

As far as i know, that's wrong. I have seen a number of PC's with a firewire port, but Windows NEVER complained on such a PC that i should/could use a faster port.



I don't think it's the case here, but there's a small chance there's a problem with the (Mainboard/USB-)drivers or the device itself or the USB-cable. For example, once i had 3 USB-cables connected to each other. That was too long. Another time, i had a malfunctional card-reader. It generated unreliable working of devices and all kind of USB-errors.

Answer 3

You are probably using a USB 2.0 device with a USB 1.0 port. It will still work, but the transfer speed will be hindered to about one tenth of what it would be if you were to use a USB 2.0 port. Just try plugging it into all the ports, and then see if any don't give you that error. If all of them give you that error, then they are probably all USB 1.0 ports.

Answer 4

Just try some other USB-ports. Some will have a high-speed (probably USB 2.0) connection, other will have a USB 1-connector, maybe.

Answer 5

there all the same