I bought a couple of usb 2.0 external hard-drives at a good price. my computer only has the old usb ports (which I understand are somewhat slow). 1) I've seen usb 2.0 cards anywhere from 10 bucks up to 50 bucks and more. any difference in these cards? do they all work about the same? are there some not any good, that I should stay away from?

also I'm considering removing my pci modem (which I don't use any more) and adding another pci card with ide channels (for a possible intermal 3rd drive). my question here is can you over-load the pci buss with ethernet pci running thru a pci card, ethernet usb 2.0 pci cards as well as a pci card with a couple of more internal hard-drives running thru the pci buss. also any pci-- ethernet, ide, usb 2.0 cards (chipsets) better, worse, suck--don't get at any price, that I should get stay away from. thx.

 

wow... and I don't have any cards in any of my computers other than upgraded video cards.

What kind of procossor do you have? If you are up for a fun project I would dump that old motherboard and grab something with everything onboard.

You can get into one for about $50~60 for that will have 4 IDE ports, 10/100 ethernet, and 6 USB2 ports/headers assuming you processor isn't the lastest socket type (based on your USB1 I wouldn't think so). Oh and most of them have 6 channel audio too. Although I only use 4 myself.

 

If your operating system will support USB 2.0, one card is enough. Just connect a USB hub to the card and the USB devices into it. you can daisy chain up to 127 USB devices.

Once the slots are filled, the bus will be filled.

Your motherboard should support up to 4 IDE devices with the connectors currently on the board. Two IDE devices per cable, two cables per motherboard.

You can hot plug USB 2.0 devices with the right operating system, so you can add and remove the USB drives as needed. They don't need to be connected all the time. Brands of USB cards, just buy something you have heard of.

You might want to run Drive Fitness Test on these second hand drives to be sure you haven't inherited someone else's problem.

Hope this helps.

 

thx, the 120 gb external drives are new, western digital.

I just don't know anything about internal pci usb 2.0 cards and internal ethernet pci cards ---ie, are there bad chipsets, bad manufacturers of new pci cards (the chinese stuff on ebay for instance) , stuff I should stay away from etc. an example is that if you go down to a local store about the cheapest usb 2.0 pci card you can find is around 30 bucks. however if you go over to the comp usa on-line store they have some usb 2.0 pci cards for 10 or 11 bucks. starlight or starbright....something like that. just wondered if all these cards were 6 of 1, half dozen of the other as far as speed and general overall quality or are there pci cards by certain manufacturers that are substantially better/worse than others...

 

I think it's a waste of money to spend alot on a USB card. If it makes you more comfortable to buy from a "higher end" name brand (i.e. Adaptec, Belkin, etc.), then go right ahead. They will undoubtedly work well, and the companies will stand behind their products.

In my opinion, though, you're mostly paying for the name.

I bought a firewire card made by a company called Koutech that was dirt cheap, but it got excellent reviews. It works like a charm for me. I would imagine their USB cards get similar good reviews.

Newegg sells them, if you're interested.

 

I wound't recommend spending too much time fretting over those types of upgrades. They are pretty much commodities these days. USB and ethernet are plopped in an IC and are fairly off the shelf.

When I was using PCI ethernet cards the $11 ones did the trick and were supported by 98 and linux without much fuss. This commoditization is why so many motherboard chipsets have these things integrated now. You'd be hard pressed to find a "premium" USB or 10/100 ethernet card that really had anything over another generic model.

The only thing I would recommend though if you are worried about specific support for a device is doing some googling.

For instance there was this RAID SATA controller that wouldn't work right with a certain rev of some brand drive (names left out intentionally). If you know specifically which hardware you wish to support and which upgrade you are considering you can google up those parts/model numbers with keywords like "problem" or "not seeing" or "screwed up" and if there have been any problems you will find other people complaining about them pretty quickly (often along with solutions or end results; like "returned that and got brand X and it's been fine since").