What makes it 2.0?

[Iman74]

I know there is usb 2.0 and 1.1, for a device to talk at 2.0 it must be 2.0 compatable, otherwise it will revert to 1.1.

But what I am curious about is the following: you plug in a usb 2.0 PCI bus hub, and it's recognized by XP Pro and the default drivers are loaded. Do the drivers have any effect on if the "2.0 devices" that are plugged into the 2.0 usb PCI hub if they are talk at 2.0 or 1.1? Another way to put it is is it the technology that determines the talk speed?

[bailey]

good question
working on the answere myself.
I have all 2.0 ports on my MB and all the self powered hubs connected are rated as 1.1
so I am going to get a usb hard drive today and try it in the differant ports to see if I notice any differances in them.
I will post what I find tonight.or this afternoon

[bailey]

well I am happy to day that it works great.
got the encloser at comp-usa and put a old 850 meg hard drive that I had laying around in it and formated it, it only took a few min to do that, then copies a bunch of files to it and took roughly 5 min to fill it up. so now I will go get a big drive and put in it.

it works good on both usb ports 1.1 and 2.0, there is a speed differance.

looked at the price of 2.0 usb hubs and thay are 80 bucks for them. so there is a differance.

[Iman74]

But now do you think it's the hardware only or the drivers too that make it usb 2.0?

[QuickSilver]

In a way, it is both. No matter what drivers you try to use, you will never get USB 1.1 to run at 2.0 speeds (480Mbps). However, you have to have the correct drivers to utilize USB 2.0, or it will run at 1.1 speeds (150Mbps). As far as I can remember, WinXP only supports USB 2.0 under Service Pack 1 or above.

[bailey]

both, its a hardware differance for sure also drivers.
just hooked it to my laptop and it gave me the notice that there is no high speed controlers installed and will run at the lower speed, which I really don't see a great deal of differance so far, but there is a differance.

the drive in it is a old one, 5400 rpm
but will get a new one 7200-160 gig and 8 meg buffer and see if that makes a differance.

[QuickSilver]

It would probably be a lot more noticeable if you where trying to run a USB network or downloading a video from a digital cam, but just for running printers and stuff, you will never see the diff.

[Iman74]

For me I do see the difference because I use thumbdrives regularly: it is quite obvious with a 1.1 vs a 2.0 usb thumbdrive.

[QuickSilver]

Yep, that would be a case where you would be able to tell.