External hard drive slow on Mac

[Brad Johnson]

All you Mac peeeeeeples, I gots da question...

I have an external HD on my machine (USB interface).  I'm using it to transfer data to a co-worker's machine, a MacBook.  On my machine it's screaming fast.  On his it's painfully slow.  The database I'm transferring is about 80Gb.  It takes appx 45 minutes to copy over the data on my machine.  His machine is still slogging along after four HOURS, and is claiming there's another 20 to go.  What gives?

Brad

[mtnbkr]

Are the USB ports on his USB2.0 or 1.1?  I doubt they're 1.1, but you never know.

Chris

[Brad Johnson]

Didn't think of that.  The Mac is USB 2.0 but the cheapo hub the drive is plugged into is probably 1.1.

*edit to add*  Yep, it is.  Blecch.

Brad

[Silver Bullet]

Since 2003 the USB ports on the back of the Mac have been 2.0, while the keyboard USB ports (that is, the two available USB ports on the keyboard itself, usually used for the mouse) remained 1.0.
 
1998:  First G3 iMac.  All USB is 1.0.  No FireWire.
1999:  400MHz G3 iMac.  All USB is 1.0.  FireWire 400.  FireWire is your friend.
2003:  G4 iMac.  Mac USB is 2.0, keyboard USB is 1.0.  FireWire 400.
2004:  G5 iMac.  Mac USB is 2.0, keyboard USB is 1.0.  FireWire 400.   
 
Apple didn’t invent USB, but they certainly popularized it.  The iMac was a complete break from previous Macs in that it had no floppy drive, no proprietary “Apple Desktop Bus (ADB)” ports for keyboard and mouse, and no serial port for printers.  At the time of the first iMac's release very few wintel machines had USB, and (as I recall) USB printers were not immediately available for the Mac then.       
 
My point of all this (finally!) is that G4 (and later) Macs very likely have USB 2.0 on the Mac’s chassis, and 1.0 on the keyboard ports; use the chassis USB.
 
Or better yet FireWire if your external drive has it.