Hi all:

In order to connect to an external 2.5 harddisk with USB, I have tried
three different USB 2.0 PCMCIA (Cardbus) cards on my Compaq Presario
2197 (AMD Athlon XP 2800). The cards can all be recognized, but only on
one card the hard drive is recognized. Even so, the speed is very slow.
Transfering a file of 1GB will take about 25-27 minutes. I have also
tried an Acomdata external harddrive, which works great with an IBM
laptop, and see the same thing. BTW, the time for transfering a 1GB
file on the IBM is about 6-7 minutes. It is not as quick as a regular
USB 2.0 but still far better than the speed I got on Compaq Presario.

I am using Windows XP (SP2).

All the three cards work (harddrives can be recognized with a problem)
on the IBM laptop.

Can anybody help? Is this a problem with AMD? or Compaq?

Thanks.


Zhixin

zhixin_han@hotmail.com wrote:
: Hi all:

: In order to connect to an external 2.5 harddisk with USB, I have tried
: three different USB 2.0 PCMCIA (Cardbus) cards on my Compaq Presario
: 2197 (AMD Athlon XP 2800). The cards can all be recognized, but only on
: one card the hard drive is recognized. Even so, the speed is very slow.
: Transfering a file of 1GB will take about 25-27 minutes. I have also
: tried an Acomdata external harddrive, which works great with an IBM
: laptop, and see the same thing. BTW, the time for transfering a 1GB
: file on the IBM is about 6-7 minutes. It is not as quick as a regular
: USB 2.0 but still far better than the speed I got on Compaq Presario.

How have you installed drivers for these USB cards? Did you insert a
CD from the Cardbus card manufacturer and load drivers from it?

If you go into Device Manager, do you see any devices listed as
"Enhanced USB Host Controller" and/or USB 2.0 Root Hub? If not, you
may not have USB 2.0 drivers installed for the card.

Have you tried getting the latest drivers for your card(s) from the
manufacturers' website? Gotten all driver updates from Compaq for
your computer? Done all Windows Updates?

Andrew
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in addition to the other post, if you are running some other device off the
card and it is usb 1.1 it will slow the usb 2.0 to that speed.
<zhixin_han@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1108346846.803922.66230@f14g2000cwb.googlegro ups.com...

BigJIm wrote:
....adding to the previous good advice, USB alone will likely not supply
enough power to the drive. Supplemental power is usually necessary for
external USB drives whether from a dummy USB power-only connection or an
external power adapter.

Q

Thank you all for your replies.

I am using Windows XP. Since Windows XP SP1 has the driver for USB so
the attached CD doesn't provide for XP.

In Device Manager, I see a "Enhanced USB Host Controller", but not USB
2.0 hub.

I have upgraded drivers and other software from Windows and HP. I also
tried using a external supply of 5V. And I am only attaching this
device (external HD) to the ports on the card.

Maybe wrong driver was installed by XP? But I doubt it. Or it is a
hardware problem?

Thanks.

Best regards,

Zhixin

"BigJIm" <Jim10277@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3LedndmctLjUqY3fRVn-ow@comcast.com...
There is something seriously wrong if you get this effect. It should not
happen because the USB 1 device is connected via a completely different root
hub and host controller in the USB card. This may sound like a daft
arrangement but there are actually technical reasons why it has to be this
way.

I run a 400 Mb/s USB 2 device and a 1.5 Mb/s USB 1.1 mouse without any
problems.

Ian.

<zhixin_han@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1108612765.072544.32500@o13g2000cwo.googlegro ups.com...
The USB 2 root hub is identified as 'root hub', just like the USB 1 root
hubs. Check the number or ports on the 'power' tab of properties of each
root hub in device manager. If the number of ports is double the number of
actual ports (not forgetting any unused headers on a motherboard), then you
have USB2 up and running. As a further clue, the USB 1 root hubs tend to be
limited to handling 2 ports, unlike its USB2 counterpart which handle the
lot. The USB2 root hub is usually the bottom one.

Ian.