- Jan 20, 2015
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- 4,510
First off, my knowledge on how USB ports work is fairly limited, which is probably why I'm running into this issue that is likely an easy fix. I ordered a 320GB USB 3.0 external hard drive and I have encountered an issue with the transfer speed, finding it excruciatingly slow, much slower than (I think) it should be. It starts at about 200 mb/s and gets slower and slower as the transfer of a file continues, until it halts at 1.5kb/s.
I know that 3.0 hard drives are backwards compatible with 2.0 USB ports (and that the transfer speed is capped at whatever the port's is). However, after messing around with my device manager a little, it looks like my computer doesn't have any active USB 2.0 ports. My motherboard specifications state that I have 14 USB 2.0/1.1 ports. I can see 12, two on the side and 10 on the back of the computer. What confuses me is that since the motherboard's specification page states that they are 2.0/1.1 ports, I'm guessing there's a way to switch in between them? If so, then it looks like they're only functioning as USB 1.1 ports.
This picture indicates the two controllers and two hubs that appear to be 2.0. If you're numbering the controllers from 1-9, numbers 1,2, and 6 seem to be completely unused. However, all of the rest operate two usb ports each, which I found by inserting my mouse's USB into all of them and checking which ones used bandwidth for the mouse (I'm sure there was an easier way of finding this out, but whatever).This final picture shows that both of the 2.0 hubs have 14 ports total that are not being used.
If there is any other information I can provide, let me know.
TL;DR: My computer's USB ports seem to have both 1.1 and 2.0 functionality, but after witnessing the painfully slow transfer speed of my new hard drive and looking around in device manager, I think that the ports are only working as USB 1.1 ports.
Things I've tried:
Messing around in BIOS - My only USB related options in BIOS are "USB Controller" and two Legacy related settings, and I believe USB Controller is the most relevant. However, there are only two settings for it, "Enabled" and "Disabled" (was already enabled by default). I've messed with the legacy settings as well, to no avail. I have also flashed BIOS to a newer version to see if that option would be available, it was not.
Downloading the latest drivers - I updated chipset drivers as well as SATA related stuff. No luck.
I have tried to take a look inside the computer without opening it, which I feel like I'm going to do anyways eventually. Only useful thing I could find was there was a cable come from one of these (marked by the red box) that was labeled "USB 2.0" and I think that it's an "internal header" but I don't really know all the details of what it does, I also couldn't see the other end of it.
I know that 3.0 hard drives are backwards compatible with 2.0 USB ports (and that the transfer speed is capped at whatever the port's is). However, after messing around with my device manager a little, it looks like my computer doesn't have any active USB 2.0 ports. My motherboard specifications state that I have 14 USB 2.0/1.1 ports. I can see 12, two on the side and 10 on the back of the computer. What confuses me is that since the motherboard's specification page states that they are 2.0/1.1 ports, I'm guessing there's a way to switch in between them? If so, then it looks like they're only functioning as USB 1.1 ports.
This picture indicates the two controllers and two hubs that appear to be 2.0. If you're numbering the controllers from 1-9, numbers 1,2, and 6 seem to be completely unused. However, all of the rest operate two usb ports each, which I found by inserting my mouse's USB into all of them and checking which ones used bandwidth for the mouse (I'm sure there was an easier way of finding this out, but whatever).This final picture shows that both of the 2.0 hubs have 14 ports total that are not being used.
If there is any other information I can provide, let me know.
TL;DR: My computer's USB ports seem to have both 1.1 and 2.0 functionality, but after witnessing the painfully slow transfer speed of my new hard drive and looking around in device manager, I think that the ports are only working as USB 1.1 ports.
Things I've tried:
Messing around in BIOS - My only USB related options in BIOS are "USB Controller" and two Legacy related settings, and I believe USB Controller is the most relevant. However, there are only two settings for it, "Enabled" and "Disabled" (was already enabled by default). I've messed with the legacy settings as well, to no avail. I have also flashed BIOS to a newer version to see if that option would be available, it was not.
Downloading the latest drivers - I updated chipset drivers as well as SATA related stuff. No luck.
I have tried to take a look inside the computer without opening it, which I feel like I'm going to do anyways eventually. Only useful thing I could find was there was a cable come from one of these (marked by the red box) that was labeled "USB 2.0" and I think that it's an "internal header" but I don't really know all the details of what it does, I also couldn't see the other end of it.
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