I can't answer your question directly but I think you need to look at the drives specs. If you don't have the manual that came with the drive, maybe you can check the manufacturers web site. You might also check this page for data transfer rates of USB: http://www.usb.org/info/usb_nomenclature I hope this helps. rpgoldman at real-time.com wrote: > I was wondering if anyone had any expertise to share about USB hard > drives. I'm finding that access to mine seems terribly slow; far > slower than I think it ought to be. > > I'm trying to use one as an external backup device. Because I was > careless, I didn't wipe the drive first (it was originally used as a > backup device in a removable hard-drive drawer, before a recent > upgrade), so have been deleting directories prior to copying stuff > onto it, but this seems terribly, terribly slow. > > For example: > > rm -rf for 3 megabytes: 50 seconds > rm -rf for 5.5 megabytes: 2 minutes 40 seconds! > > At this rate my backups are going to be very time-consuming! > > Is there some tuning or hdparming sort of thing I should do? > > thanks, > R > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org > Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > > -- Eric (Rick) Meyerhoff _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list