I'm almost positive this isn't possible, but...

[JungleMan1]

I've got one of those old slow USB 1.1 hard drives. It's a Buslink 25GB to be exact, and it's REALLY slow considering it's USB 1.1.

If I were to buy a USB 2.0 interface card, would it be possible to run it off of that and gain a faster speed?

Or does anyone know how hard it'd be to just rip this drive out of the yellow case? I'm sure it's just a standard 5400rpm IDE drive in there.

[Platypus]

I'd agree with you, JM, that it wouldn't make any difference. A USB2 interface will be backwards compatible with a USB1.1 device & run it at that speed. Like putting a UDMA33 hard drive on a UDMA100 controller, still runs at 33.

And there prolly is a regular IDE drive lurking in the box.

[confus-ed]

Aye! but an ata 33 disk runs a load faster connected to say an ata 66 controller, (mostly!?) doesn't it? Cos it can read it all the time at peak rate instead of waiting for the buffers to fill. Soooo maybe ... (but I'm not paying!). If you could test one....

[Platypus]

If that happened there'd be no need for the drive manufacturers to make UDMA66 & 100 drives, just put UDMA33 drives on the faster interface.

I have seen claims that using UDMA66/100 cables on UDMA33 drives gives several percent speed boost as the greater data integrity cuts down on re-read requests. I don't know if it's true.

[JungleMan1]

Anyone ever cracked open one of these Buslinks?

[Milenko]

I've never had one open, but it would be silly of them to come up with some kind of special interface with some kind of special drive. Ten bucks says that there's a Maxtor/Seagate/WD/Ibm drive in there hooked up to a standard IDE connector.

Only problem with putting a new drive in there is that you'll still be limited to your USB bandwidth, which is less than that of an ATA33 drive. So even if you put the fastest drive on the planet in there, it prolly won't make it any faster.

[orange]

Putting another drive in the box isn't going to make any difference...it'll still be using the same interface. I suspect JM is more interested in using the drive on a normal IDE interface. Go for it JM, or send it to me and i'll rip it apart for ya

[JungleMan1]

I was not implying putting a faster drive in there, I meant ripping the 5400rpm drive out as in to put it inside my system.

[Milenko]

[quote]Originally posted by JungleMan:
<strong>I was not implying putting a faster drive in there, I meant ripping the 5400rpm drive out as in to put it inside my system.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Oh - in that case, go for it. Worst that'll happen is that you'll pop the case and see some weirdo drive in there. If so, just put the case back on and sell it on ebay.