Can I up from USB to USB2?

[jollyjohn]

Is it possible to go from USB to USB2. I have a 1 tera USB external sata HD and it's painfully slow. I try to install a 4 Port USB 2.0 PCI Card, installed the drivers, but did not worked.
What do I have to do to get USB2 capabilities?


Thank you for any answuers


john

[guns1inger]

You have to get the PCI card working, or get a different PCI card that does work.

[mpack]

I try to install a 4 Port USB 2.0 PCI Card, installed the drivers, but did not worked.

What exactly did not work? Do you mean that the new USB 2.0 ports did not work at all (eg. not even with a simple USB2 flash drive) or only that they don't work with your 1TB external HDD?

Large capacity external (USB) HDDs are notorious for high power requirements that they can't source from a single USB2 port. This problem often requires them to use external mains power supplies or a USB "Y-connector" to take power from more than one port. Check out some of the review sites (eg. Amazon) for examples.

[jollyjohn]

I try to install a 4 Port USB 2.0 PCI Card, installed the drivers, but did not worked.

What exactly did not work? Do you mean that the new USB 2.0 ports did not work at all (eg. not even with a simple USB2 flash drive) or only that they don't work with your 1TB external HDD?

Large capacity external (USB) HDDs are notorious for high power requirements that they can't source from a single USB2 port. This problem often requires them to use external mains power supplies or a USB "Y-connector" to take power from more than one port. Check out some of the review sites (eg. Amazon) for examples.

I tried the PCI card's every port one by one with a pen driveand the printer, It did not show them even after rebooting with the drive plugged in.
The external HD is powered from a 12V transformer that came with the set, so power is not an issue.
Do you think the mother board would not support USB2? I'm I waisting my time trying to run the PCI card on it?

Thanks for the replies.


John

[gadgetguy]

Does the PCI card show up in Device Manager? Did you try moving the PCI card to a different PCI slot?

[redwudz]

If you have the proper USB 2.0 driver installed, you should see a new 'enhanced' PCI to USB Host Controller in your Device Manager under the Universal Serial Bus Controllers. The key word is 'enhanced' as that identifies it as a USB 2.0 controller. XP should already have the controller as it's part of the OS.

I would try a different PCI slot as gadgetguy suggested. Sometimes there is a IRQ conflict with new cards. With most motherboards, you want to avoid the card slot directly under the graphics card as that is shared with the graphics card IRQ. I don't know if newer PCI-E motherboards still have this problem.

If none of this works, you may have a bad card.

[RLT69]

I tried the PCI card's every port one by one with a pen drive and the printer, It did not show them even after rebooting with the drive plugged in.

Dude it's your PCI card.

You first need to make sure that the PCI card is properly seated in the PCI slot and then check to see that the OS recognizes there is a card present. In Windows, you need to check Device Manager. If the card does not show up in Device Manager then you either have a dead card or the card is not compatible with your motherboard and/or OS.

Depending on your OS you will need a driver for USB 2.0 support. XP SP2 does not require a USB 2.0 driver.

Cheers.

[mpack]

Do you think the mother board would not support USB2? Am I wasting my time trying to run the PCI card on it?

I assume you are asking whether the motherboard BIOS supports USB2 - and it probably doesn't, but that should not matter. It only matters that your OS supports this card (via third party drivers if need be).

Incidentally, I have an Adaptec USB2 PCI card installed in an older PC running XP Pro SP2. I just checked and it looks like I didn't need to install any third party drivers for it. The card is recognized in Device Manager as a "Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller" and is managed by a Microsoft driver which is presumably part of XP.

Perhaps you could try restoring your copy of XP back to a point before you installed the third party drivers, reboot, (or power down and move the card to a new PCI slot as gadgetguy suggests) and let the new hardware wizard find its own preferred drivers for it? Hopefully you still have your XP install CD handy, or maybe you made an install folder on your hard disk.

[SLK001]

Your computer specs are close to mine. I bought two PCI USB2 cards to put in two separate machines, but neither one would work with my Gigabyte MB. I placed it into every PCI slot that there was. Although Windows never showed any resource conflicts, it would NOT work with my wireless internet card (for long). There was nothing that I tried that would get these two cards to "play nice". I need my WIFI card - the USB2 would have been just a luxury.

I rarely, if ever, suffer from BSODs. With the USB2 card, it was occurring daily. I even tried to manually allocate the IRQs, just like the "good ol' days", but even this didn't work. I eventually gave up on trying to install USB2 on my computer.

I have started upgrading my system to deal with problems like this.

[cd090580]

Your card is recognized by the BIOS (during the POST) ?

If yes, check the device manager.
If not, then the card is probably in conflict with other hardware or not correctly plugged.

Maybe there is an option in your bios to disable some PCI slots and the one your plugged the card is disabled.

If it's still not working, try the card on another computer, maybe yours is defective.

[jollyjohn]

I'm overwhelmed with all the good tips. Thank you very much. Now, I have some work to do trying your suggestions.
There is only one slot where I can plug the PCI card on the MB. The others I cannot use because some capacitors get in the way.
MB: Manufacturer : Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. (Gigabyte)
Product : SiS-645

USB BUS: Device : SiS5597/8 Universal Serial Bus Controller
Version : 1.0
Interface : UHCI
Frequency : 48 MHz

Device Information :
Device : SiS5597/8 Universal Serial Bus Controller
Version : 1.0
Interface : UHCI
Frequency : 48 MHz

I'll let you know when I do some more tests.


John

[TBoneit]

XP with at least SP2 ??

[gll99]

Don't be shocked if you only get 1.1 speed from an add-on card. I tried a single pci usb 2.0 card and also a combo pci usb 2.0/firewire card on my old P4 1.6 Asus MB with onboard usb 1.1 support. Once I got past the problems of choosing a non conflicting pci slot etc.. The enhanced usb is working except I clocked the speed and it's the same as the usb 1.1 bus. Even when I completely disable onboard usb functions and legacy support in the bios and basically have dead usb 1.1 ports the enhanced pci usb 2.0 bus still only functions at 1.1 speeds when moving data to thumb drives or flash cards. When I compare the same data moved on my other system with native usb 2.0 onboard the difference in speed is obvious.

I have no explanation but it isn't about unrecognized or problem devices, using the wrong usb cable, using usb 1.1 devices on a usb 2.0 port or a missing enhanced driver/device. All appears as it should but the expected speed isn't there.

btw) I have an Asus MB but it has trhe same SIS-645 chipset

[jollyjohn]

XP with at least SP2 ??

Yes mate, it is.
Some more specs:
Processor : Intel Pentium 4 @ 1800 MHz
Physical Memory : 1536 MB
Operating System : Microsoft Windows XP Professional 5.01.2600 Service Pack 2

Bios : Award Software International, Inc.
Manufacturer : Award Software International, Inc.
Version : 6.00 PG
Date : 09/13/2002 (mm/dd/yyyy)
Address : 0x0 on 256 KB
Copyright : Copyright (C) 1984-2002, Award Software, Inc.
Motherboard ID : 09/13/2002-SiS-645-6A6IXG0KC-00
OEM Signature : GA-8SR533 F6
DMI Version : 2.3

Characteristics :
Flashable : Yes
Socketed : Yes

Functionality :
APM : Yes
ACPI : Yes
ESCD : No
PnP : Yes
PCI : Yes
ISA : Yes
AGP : Yes
USB : Yes
PCMCIA : No
Smart Battery : No

Boot Information :
Selectable Boot : Yes
CD-ROM Boot : Yes
PC Card (PCMCIA) Boot : No
I20 Boot : No
LS-120 Boot : Yes
1394 Boot : No
ATAPI ZIP Boot : Yes
Network Boot : Yes

It would be nice if I only could get some more USB ports. Even if they were USB1, at the very worst. At the moment I have only two.

I'll reinstall the card or buy a new one, different brand of course.

I'm sure we'll all learn something from this.

I'll keep you posted.


John

[gll99]

It would be nice if I only could get some more USB ports. Even if they were USB1, at the very worst. At the moment I have only two.

In that case buy a usb hub to add extra connectors. They are very common and inexpensive at $10 or less for a 4 port model. Keep in mind that even if it's a 2.0 hub it will operate at the speed of the host that it's plugged into.

[mpack]

Keep in mind that even if it's a 2.0 hub it will operate at the speed of the host that it's plugged into.

And also that all devices attached to the hub will share the bandwidth of the single host port. I personally don't feel its a good idea to put a high bandwidth device (such as an external HDD) on a hub port.

[jollyjohn]

OK. I tried everything and nothing made Windows detect the pen drive. It shows the PCI to USB card in device manager, but not as enhanced device.
I have fallen out of love with USB.
What wold you guys think I could use, from these products bellow, to plug the Sata drive externally.

IDE PCI Card / SATA PCI Card / Combo 2xSATA,1xPCI Card $23/$23/$26
PCI TO E-SATA / SATA / IDE $35
PCI TO IDE/SATA/eSATA $40

Q. What is a HDD Mobile Rack SATA?

Thank you all for your advice.

John