External USB 2.0 case not backwards compatible?

[DaviDaVinci]

I bought one and was told that it would work on USB 1.0 pc's also. It works fine on my other pc which is running XP and has 2.0 ports. On my laptop with USB 1.0, it recognizes it as 2.0 and can't install drivers for some reason. I thought i read other users being able to use it on 1.0.....hmm....

 

[Corporate Thug]

usb 2.0 is backwards compatible

 

[SocrPlyr]

what OS is on the lappy? and the rest of the hardware etc... try seeing also if there is a driver somewhere for it...
just as a note, i believe that if a device is truely USB 2.0 then it MUST also work with 1.0 (part of the 2.0 spec) and thus if was advertised as such would be improper and grounds for false advertising...

Josh

 

[godspeedx]

Originally posted by: SocrPlyr
what OS is on the lappy? and the rest of the hardware etc... try seeing also if there is a driver somewhere for it...
just as a note, i believe that if a device is truely USB 2.0 then it MUST also work with 1.0 (part of the 2.0 spec) and thus if was advertised as such would be improper and grounds for false advertising...

Josh

Yeah all USB 2.0 products are backwards compatible.

 

[DaviDaVinci]

Newegg

I just saw this link. There's a driver download. I might try that tomorrow.

I'm running win98se and have latest patches.

Thanks for the info.

 

[SocrPlyr]

many devices need drivers for win98 but not for xp... so that is probably your problem...

Josh

 

[Mday]

win98se does not have support for usb2.0 (that is, MS said no)

 

[DaviDaVinci]

Originally posted by: Mday
win98se does not have support for usb2.0 (that is, MS said no)

well, on the product site it shows as compatible and a few users have reported also so before.

i installed the drivers but i still can't see anything in MY COMPUTER.

Can it be that my external hard drive is NTFS?

 

[SocrPlyr]

yes, exactly
win98se doesn't recognize NTFS...
you need to get everything off it and format it w/ FAT32 if you want the machine to recognize it...

Josh

 

[DaviDaVinci]

any disadvantages using FAT32 for an external data only drive?

 

[SocrPlyr]

Anandtech FAQ NTFS vs. FAT32 http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=63
Really though, you shouldn't notice a difference...

Josh

 

[DaviDaVinci]

It's a 200 gig drive. So If i go Fat 32 way, i would need more then one partition.

On NTFS "File security. Access rights can be assigned to files and directories, allowing users full access, partial access or no access at all to data on your hard disk."

Will that work for external drives as well? Because I'd like keep certain folders "no access" when I let friends borrow my drive to copy certain files.

 

[Wedesdo]

Out of curiosity, why don't you upgrade your laptop to XP?

If it's an older machine, you may think it will make it too much slower, but as long as you have enough RAM, an optimized Windows XP install can be just as fast as a 98 install, and it'll be a lot more stable and compatiable.