# USB 1 & DVD-R on win 98??

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usb-1-dvd-r-on-win-98/226300>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 27, 2004, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usb-1-dvd-r-on-win-98/226300 "2004-01-27T17:21:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![flapcats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@flapcats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flapcats)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usb-1-dvd-r-on-win-98/226300/1 "2004-01-27T17:21:37Z")

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A friend wants to backup his laptop onto DVD.  
It’s Win 98 & has two USB 1.1 ports & no firewire (please don’t suggest he upgrades/buys a new laptop…)

He’s been looking at external USB DVD writers, which are AFAIK USB2.  
I know most USB 2 devices work on USB 1, but will the bus speed/write speed be enough for this to work?

What if he was writing from an external USB hard disk? I believe that 2 ports share the bandwidth, so read/write speeds would be halved, would the writer still work or would he be making lots of coasters?

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**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2004, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usb-1-dvd-r-on-win-98/226300/2 "2004-01-27T21:10:03Z")

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Suggest he upgrade his laptop? Not me! But I’m the guy who had to explain the virtues of my [Tandy Model 100](http://www.trs-80.com/trs80-10.htm) to a co-worker this morning.

If I understand it correctly, and this is why I bought an internal CD writer for my Win 98 machine, external drives that hook to USB 1.1 ports are limited to 4X speed. Not a lot compared to what the same drive on a USB 2.0 port can do but reasonable enough for backing up a system. If a music CD plays in 80 minutes at 4X speed that CD could be written in 20 minutes. He won’t want to watch it burn but that’s 700MB being backed up.

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**Author:** ![flapcats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@flapcats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flapcats)\
**Post date:** [January 28, 2004, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/usb-1-dvd-r-on-win-98/226300/3 "2004-01-28T11:50:42Z")

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What about DVD writers? Does anyone know of any DVD writers that work with USB 1 (to write DVDs, not CDs) - what about the same thing on Win98?