I got my new eMac G4 about 2 months ago. It had 40 GB of hard drive. Now its got 500 MB left!!! My videos hog all the space now. I have no room to make anything else. Luckily I bought an external HD. Its a Western Digital 80 GB hard drive, but its USB 2.0! I thought the transfer times were alot faster! Is there anything I can do to speed up these transfers. I own a Mac.

?

Thanks,
Dave

What are you copying and for what purpose? The figures shown for USB 2 are for short bursts of read/write. Under sustained read/write the speed of USB 2 is much slower.

I will be transferring video projects and and large files.

FireWire is faster and more reliable for transferring large media files. I don't think there is anything that can be done to speed up the transfer. Maybe make sure no other hardware is being used, or plugged in, on the USB 2 ports when you do the transfers.

What software are you using for capturing and editing your video?

I know that Final Cut Pro cannot be used with USB 2.0 drives...but I don't know about iMovie. I suspect that iMovie too cannot use a USB drive for editing. It must be firewire...which has superior transfer speeds.

FCP and iMovie do not support capture via USB 2. But if I understand Dave correctly he is only wanting to temporarily store the footage on the USB drives. If you want to edit the media, then you'll need FireWire drives.