I just added a 500GB Western Digital USB2.0 external hard drive to my SuSE 9.1 box and it comes up fine except it's extermely slow when copying large files. When I look in /proc/bus/usb/devices, it says the driver used for the external HDD is "usb-storage". And it says "Spd=12," which I assume means 12Mbps.

I need it to be 480Mbps (USB2), because I need to copy about 250GB of data from the internal drive to the external. I edited /etc/sysconfig/kernel and set
MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT="ehci-hcd"
to force the USB2 module to load before USB1, and rebooted, and it's still slow, and Spd=12 still.

What else can I try to make USB2 work?

Thanks.

/////////////////////////////
// output of /sbin/lsusb
/////////////////////////////

# /sbin/lsusb
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 1058:0900 Western Digital Technologies, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 1058:0900 Western Digital Technologies, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Does the machine have multiple USB ports. On some machines I have seen have like 1.0 ports in front and 2.0 ports in the back or vice a versa.

If it loads the ehci-hcd then there should be 2.0 ports. To see loaded modules use the command ' lsmod '.

Also using a gui tool like USBview which may already be installed will show a better view of what you have and where things are. Use the command ' usbview ' and see if installed. If not install a copy.

Brian

Turns out, I was misinformed by the vendor. They told me the motherboard had USB2 ports but they just corrected themselves. THere are no USB2 ports, just USB1.

Glad to see you have it worked out. I use an Adaptec 2.0 USB and Firewire PCI card.

Brian