USB external drives problem

[Blintok]

Greetings all.

did a search but nothing specific to this problem i found

Dim8400
2gig ram
Nvidia 6800GS

I have 2 new external USB hard drives. I barely use them ..just there for
backups ..One is a Comstar 250g and other is a Iomega 500g
I have things backed up on them now and appeared to be working fine

I have read in the Dim8400 manual that all the USB ports are USB 2.0
but looking in device manager it appears that one one of roots are USB2
is there an updated driver? i looked in drivers here but cant find anything specific to the usb hub..i have the latest BIOS (9 i think i was)
device manager shows these drivers are dated 2004 - i have all the latest Microsoft patches and could not find updated USB drivers there.

in total i have plugged into the usb ports, the cable to the dell 1907fp usb ports.
a usb mouse. a cable for my nikon camera. and the 2 usb drives

the problem is the drives either say that they would run better if i run them on a USB2 port or after a while of running they just stop..xp "looses" the drive and i have to reset it or xp finds it again and says it will work better on 2.0...... I have tried plugging them into the different ports on the back
but its always the same. I tried every port on the back. ports on the front and ports on the monitor..
I have used a 4g USB key drive in the monitor port and it works ok.

any one have any ideas? very frustrating and not making me feel good about using these as a back up

 

[corkyg]

This is very confusing. Whether a port is USB 1 or 2 is not based on drivers - it is based on hardware.

If you only have 1 USB 2 port and you need more, get a powered USB 2 hub.

As for backup - nothing can hurt it. A faster port is a faster backup - but slow works too.