External Hard Drive -- not copying

[jepeters]

I have 3 new external USB hard drives. I have been trying to transfer some large video files from them to my home computer, which is old and has USB 1 ports on it. The files will not transfer--it tries, but after about 10 minutes it crashes, says it can't locate the file (on the external drive).

I WAS able to transfer these large files when I used a Firewire external hard drive. And, when I use my new external USB drives on computers with USB 2, they seem to work fine.

Would the fact that my old computer only has USB 1 be the reason why these files won't copy to this computer?

[glc]

Good chance. USB 2 PCI cards are cheap and you will get MUCH faster transfers.

[jepeters]

I can see why USB 2 would be FASTER at copying large files, but why doesn't USB 1 work at all. Actually, it doesn't make any difference--I was plugged in to my back USB ports, I completely forgot that my front ports that I added in this summer ARE USB 2, so it worked when I plugged in to them.

[glc]

USB 1 is so slow the hard drive buffer is running out of data. It's like trying to run a fast CD burner on an old slow system.