wrote:

thanks. I sheepishly confess I was worried about the particular USB
port. It hadn't been in use and I'm not sure I got all the dust out of
it. I will try another and report back. It's just such a mess in back
of the computer, with wires and all, that once I get something
installed, I'm loath to mess with it but I will

It wont be dust, but its still worth trying another.

I'm using XP on both computer. What do you mean by USB patch for xp?
I'd do that but I'd hate to do a clean install. None of my other usb
devices seem to have a problem.

You dont need to do a clean install, just apply the relevant update.

Go to the Windows update site http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/
check for updates. It will offer you the update if your system needs that.


Rod Speed wrote:
wrote:

I just hooked up a new Simpletech usb 2.0 drive. I'm having an odd
problem. If I try to copy or move, for example, a 2 gigabyte mpeg
file from my internal IDE hard drive to the external drive, it takes
forever. The progress box showing the copy or move estimates it will
take over an hour. However, if I try to copy or move the equivalent
size (2 gigabytes) of non-mpeg files--pdf, word, jpeg, etc.--the
transfer takes place in less than a minute. I have another computer
with usb 2.0 drive that does not have this issue.

Anybody have any idea what might be going on?

Most likely a problem with a particular USB port. Can you try
another ?

Is there a problem with the Simpletech, possibly?

The check for that would be to try the Simpletech on the
other PC which works fine with a different USB drive.

I don't see why the copy/move is so different
in terms of time depending on the type of file.

You can get quirks like that with some USB ports.
That appears to be mostly a driver issue, but no
one who has got an effect like that has tried that
possibility carefully, a clean OS install and a careful
and systematic use of drivers to see what the problem is.

You also dont say what OS you are running, some of the
dinosaurs like 98 can have a problem because of the need
for drivers which means you need to use what the drive
manufacturer supplys. And XP needs a patch applied for USB2.