Hi,
I have an external USB 2 hard drive on my Mac Mini and I have been very happy with it. It is mainly used for storing multi-media and DV clips from my firewire video camera.
I am thinking of adding a second hard external USB 2.0 hard drive and my question is this.
Is the USB 2.0 speed of 480Mbps per device, port or for the whole USB subsystem?
What I mean by that is that my Mac Mini has 4 USB ports at the back. Is each port going to do 480Mbps or is that the overall throughput speed of the chip set.
IF it is 480Mbps per port then I guess using a USB 2.0 high speed hub means that ultimatly only 480Mbps can go from it to the Mac so putting both hard drives on the hub isn't a good idea. No?
The reason I ask is of course if I add a second drive and then copy things between them the 480Mbps will be shared and so the speed will be half of that compared to copying to the internal SATA drive.
I'm not really interested in theoretical discussions of bits, bytes and nibbles but rather what is the practical reality.
Many, many thanks,
Gary
I have an external USB 2 hard drive on my Mac Mini and I have been very happy with it. It is mainly used for storing multi-media and DV clips from my firewire video camera.
I am thinking of adding a second hard external USB 2.0 hard drive and my question is this.
Is the USB 2.0 speed of 480Mbps per device, port or for the whole USB subsystem?
What I mean by that is that my Mac Mini has 4 USB ports at the back. Is each port going to do 480Mbps or is that the overall throughput speed of the chip set.
IF it is 480Mbps per port then I guess using a USB 2.0 high speed hub means that ultimatly only 480Mbps can go from it to the Mac so putting both hard drives on the hub isn't a good idea. No?
The reason I ask is of course if I add a second drive and then copy things between them the 480Mbps will be shared and so the speed will be half of that compared to copying to the internal SATA drive.
I'm not really interested in theoretical discussions of bits, bytes and nibbles but rather what is the practical reality.
Many, many thanks,
Gary