Anyone here own an external USB drive, either with flash memory or a hard drive?

[sumptor]

I have an external USB hard drive that consists of a small enclosure containing a 2.5" laptop hard drive. It connects to my desktop PC via the USB port and runs on USB v1.1 which I believe has a max transfer rate of somewhere around 1.5 MB/s.

When copying files from my desktop to this drive, I've noticed that the copy process will be fine for the first few seconds and then things slow down to a crawl and my transfer rates will be reported as only 100 KB/s or less. This happened on several different PCs I've tested it on.

Anyone else with an external USB drive experience this? Someone suggested the problem may be due to the large difference in transfer rates between my 7200 rpm desktop drive and the limited transfer rate of the USB port which may be preventing the files from being transferred smoothly. However, this doesn't explain why files copied to a floppy, which is even slower than the USB drive, have no problems.

[phamilton]

Some USB devices must be connected to the computer USB port rather than though a multi-port hub - for example some pocket pcs. I have also had difficulties downloading images from a Sony memory stick (flash memory) when there was a hub in the line. Of course if you aren't using a hub this is not a lot of help.

[sumptor]

There are a total of 4 USB ports that are available with my motherboard (ASUS A7V133). All of these ports connect directly to the board. As part of my troubleshooting, I unplugged all USB devices except for the USB drive but I still get the same problems during file transfers.

I'm puzzled because I have a scanner and a web cam, both of which are USB, and I have no problems at all with them as far as data transfer.

[Yusaku]

dunno, mine enclosure (3.5" Lava USB2.0 on USB1.1 computer) works just fine; and CF reader does too...