Western Digital external HDD

Here's the deal. I've got a WD My Book Essential Edition 500GB. It's got a USB 2.0 connection, but I don't like it's speed. I wanna connect it to a firewire 400 port. (I know that usb actually has 8 mb/s more bandwith, but I've got more that one USB device connected, and that effectively divides your bandwith by the amount of devices connected right?)
But the thing is, I'm not sure if it would work, wether it actually would be faster and if there are any USB -> 1394a wires (it has a USB type b connector, the type you find in printers). Can anybody help me out?

It wouldn't.

Even if the Firewire is faster, you're limited by the slowest technology in the link, the USB in this case.

umm, not really, cuz the usb is actually faster. It's just the bandwith that's divided in like 4 parts. In theory, it should work, but i want to be sure.

Ha, true. Was thinking of the old USB vs. Firewire.

But yeah, more devices connected on the USB bus will divide the bandwidth. It has a lot to do with what else is connected as well.

What else do you have on the hub?

Bluetooth reciever for mouse and keyboard, Wireless internet thingy and a webcam

Wow...I don't think that adding a HD to the will help any then.

Have you always run the HD off the hub with all that on it?

since I got it yes, and i've always kicked myself for not taking the time to understand how to just build one into my computer so i would have saved (some) money and would have a better performance. It was really slow from the start, and I regularly defrag it diskeeper '08, it says i have it on 100% performance.

I was wrong about the speed of usb 2.0, it's (theoretically)480 mbit/s, which is 60 MByte/s. Firewire 400 is 400mbit/s, which is about 50 MByte/s

Well, the hub is going to be the major bottle neck. You're never going to reach that maximum, since it's a theoretical one. And you have other things connected into the hub, which will lower it significantly.

If you can, especially with a hard drive, run it on it's own USB port. You will probably see a significant increase. Or runs it off the Firewire port, as you wanted to earlier.

That should help quite a bit.

I knew the hub was a bottle neck... I have it for over a year, and it's pretty slow. But is it actually possible? And are there any firewire-> usb-b connectors? And I read something about a tetrahub somewhere, which is supposed to increase your USB speed. Anybody know anything about that?

Tetrahub is here:http://www.everythingusb.com/hardwar...4-Port_Hub.htm

Can't find anything about firewire -> usb-b connectors.

Firewire to USB and USB to firewire connections do not exist, as they are separate technologies based upon different principals. Best I had it explained to me was because of the interconnecting capacity. You can connect multiple Firewire devices in serial, but USB must be (relationally) connected in parrallel dataforms.

Of course, pure technological systems aside, thats the largest difference between them. You would have to buy a hardware converter (not cable) to switch USB to firewire (but not vica versa), but unfortunately, those are rare, if they are even produced anymore.

Do you only have two USB ports on your computer? Each one should have a separate power source and separate hub connection. Are you using an external hub "splitter"?

I have six ports, and I use 4 of them, that's why my bandwith is being split. How about I buy a cheap (not crappy) USB pci card with 1 or 2 ports, and use it for my HDD only. That would increase the speed right?

No, I thought you were using an external USB hub. External hubs are a terrible idea - don't use them. Each port probably has it's own controller and therefore, dedicated bandwidth.

So that shouldn't be a problem so much.

Why not just buy and fit an internal HDD (500GB drives are dirt cheap these days) and use the external as a back-up drive? An internal drive will be way quicker than using a HDD via a USB connection.

I know it's quicker, but I don't need another drive. A storage drive and a normal drive for my programs is enough. I'd just like it to be a bit quicker.
If each port has it's own dedicated bandwith, that's a part of the total bandwith, right? Wouldn't it then be faster if it had it's own pci card?

You can speed it up a great deal by converting it to NTFS.

Start > Run > cmd

It came as fat32, but I formatted it the moment I got it

What's the RPM on the HD? Why exactly do you want it to go faster? I hardly think the USB port or any USB hub you might be using are the problem. If you connect the external drive directly to your PC it will be at it's optimal configuration. Buying an internal USB hub will hardly change anything (other than your loss in funds).

the rpm on it is 7200. The reason i want it to be faster is that it reacts kinda slow. It will speed up the HDD if it had it's own pci card, I think, because that way it can use the full 60MBytes/s, so the transfer speeds should be faster