So I’ve been wanting an external hard drive for some time now, and I was looking through some models, but I ended up being a little confused. So call me a stupid Mac person, but what’s the difference between USB 2.0, USB 1.1, and all that? I’m not sure what type I have, which makes things even more complicated. I tried finding out by running a system profile, but it doesn’t seem to say. I’m not sure where to ask this, so I came here. Can anyone clue me in? Thanks.
Simply put USB 2.0 is much faster. USB 1.1 does 12M/bits per second which works out to 1.5MB per second. In simple english this is roughly the amount of data that would fit on a floppy disk being transferred every second.
USB 2.0 runs 480M/bits per second. This is much faster than the 1.1 standard. The plugs are the same.
Your actual hard drive will run slower than this as these speeds are just the theoretical maximum speeds that can be obtained.
One last note: If you buy a USB 2.0 hard drive, it will work just fine on a USB 1.1 computer, but at the lower speed. You can safely buy any USB device you want as long as it’s MAC compatible.
Q: What is the difference between USB 1.1 and 2.0??
A: USB 0.9 
USB 2.0, also known as high speed USB, is simply an upgrade to 1.1 and allows you to move data as fast as 480Mbps.
One way to tell if your machine is USB2.0 capable is to visit the device manager and expand the USB controllers entry. It may state plainly that you are 2.0 enabled or you may see something like “USB enhanced controller yadda yadda…”, enhanced being the key word.
Even on a Mac Patty?
The OP might want to look into a firewire compatible HD. From what I gather while Firewire is a bit slower than USB 2.0 it is more stable transferring large amounts of data.
External hard drive IO is dog slow on 1.1 USB interfaces. Make sure both drive and USB port and hub (if present) are 2.0 compatible. 2.0 makes a HUGE difference for external hard drives.
Hate to do an IIRC on a GQ, but I’m sure I remember reading this and if I am wrong somebody will correct me!
IIRC, if you have mixed USB 1.1 and 2.0 devices on the same bus, you will drastically slow down the performance of the USB 2.0 device.
There is no good reason for a Mac user to get a USB 2 external hard drive instead of a Firewire Hard drive. (No good reason not to either, just a game of battling manufacturers.)
I’m running OSX 10.3.8 and System Profiler lists my USB 2.0 ports as “USB High-Speed Bus”, and 1.1 as “USB Bus”. The speeds are listed as “up to” 480 and 12 Mb/sec., respectively.
Personally, I would use a Firewire drive.
USB 2.0 is Intel’s attempt to copy Firewire – Apple makes a decent chunk of change from Firewire royalties, and Intel cranked up USB 1.1 to try and get some of that action.
Unfortunately, while USB 2.0 is theoretically faster than Firewire, in reality it seldom does. In non-geek terms, the synchronization/coordination overhead for USB 2.0 eats up enough speed that the performance suffers notably as a result. Firewire doesn’t have this problem, as the protocol was designed from Day 1 for reliable high-speed delivery.
And Firewire 800 (2x faster than Firewire) blows any flavor of USB out of the water.
Beware. USB 2.0 is a revision of the USB specification, which was previously at version 1.1. While it adds support for high speed operation (480 Mbps), it does not require USB 2.0 compliant devices to operate at that speed. That means that even though the box says “USB 2.0”, it may only operate at full speed (12 Mbps) or low speed (1.5 Mbps). This has caused a great deal of confusion and borders on deceptive advertising.
See http://www.usb.org/info/usb_nomenclature for the current labeling recommendations and some background information.
I have a printer and scanner that are USB 2.0 compliant devices, as prominently shown on their boxes, that operate at a maximum speed of 12 Mbps, not the 480 Mbps that many people would assume.
Is that also why it takes >30 minutes for me to copy 8MB (size on disk) of Internet Favourites (2000 files, 500 folder) to my USB Flash Drive? (Whereas a single 8MB file would be almost instantaneous).
Awesome everyone, thanks for your answers and input. I’ll probably just get a firewire compatible drive in that case. Are there any “differences” in firewire that I should look out for?
Maybe, but it may also/instead be related to the way flash memory works; as I understand it, each segment of flash memory has to be explicitly erased before it can be rewritten (as opposed to what happens with RAM or hard drives, where (probably an oversimplification) the data as a binary pattern, is written/overwritten directly as (more or less) a single, simple operation).
The CPU IO overhead of writing thousands of beginning and ending file segments is what takes all that time if you are copying thousands of little files over. It’s not the limitation of the USB 1.1/2.0 IO as much as the CPU and the medum (flash is somewhat slow inherently)
Something that hasn’t been addressed in this thread, but seems entirely appropriate to the OP, is USB cables for external devices. For example, will a vs 2 cable work on 1? Vice versa? If versions are mixed, what is the result – nothing, failure, slower speed, snow in July, etc.?
I’ve used plain old USB (non USB 2.0 spec’d) cables with fast 7200 RPM 2.0 hard drives with no IO or throughput choke issues. There may be bleeding edge applications that demand only the hihgest spec’s cables, but IMO most USB cables, even if not spec’s for 2.0 will work fine for 1.1 and 2.0 applications.
Just another thought on this: They do make external hard drives that have both USB2.0 AND Firewire ports. I’ve been shopping around for these, and the selection isn’t quite as good, but prices for the same size drive are about the same. With both types of ports, you can “hedge your bet” and have an alternative if your next computer (a few years from now) doesn’t have FireWire.
Given that you’re on a Mac, that’s the right answer: ignore USB and get Firewire. As for differences, there is a really new Firewire 800, but it’s new enough that I don’t think there are many (or any) drives out there with it yet. And, unless you have one of the brand-new Macs, your Mac doesn’t have Firewire 800.
So, since most of the current drives had their box art done before Firewire 800 came along, they will all say simply “Firewire”, without specifying. If there are any Firewire 800 drives out there, the box will undoubtedly trumpet that it’s 800.
So the bottom line is that if the box or specs of the drive say just “Firewire”, you’re fine. If you find something that says “Firewire 800”, you should avoid it (unless you know that you have one of the really new Macs that support it).
Firewire 800 is standard on the PowerMacs and PowerBooks, I believe.
For regular consumer-level stuff, vanilla Firewire should be just fine. The only time I’ve ever had “issues” was when trying to simultaneously capture a full DV stream from a camcorder and write it to a Firewire drive.