Bij
I was wondering if the USB cable's quality, thickness, length or age can affect the transfer rate of an external hard disk, so any ideas ?
rolf
I don't know, but think that USB cables must follow a standard that would ensure consistent performance.
It is very possible though - at least in theory, that some companies don't follow this standard well enough. I don't know the USB protocol so cannot say whether this will result in corrupted data or lower performance.
Flakk
Thickness and age dont really matter in a usb cable. But for length the quality would degrade if its longer than 5 meters (USB 2.0).
J4D
The signals traveling on the bus are minuscule in voltage and current. The data is sent as a binary stream and is not really affected by thickness and length. what might matter with you is either your computer supports USB 2.0 or not. USB 2.0 outputs a larger current capacity and capability enabling larger rate data transfer and powers up the hard-drive it self, that's why their is a high chance that the cable you have has from one side two USB connectors to provide the HDD with more power. all in all don't worry :) and as flakk said, distance does matter a little.
MrClass
Hey. Its the Drives that degrade in performance and not the bus cables. I have a 5 year old USB Male-Male cable and it still performs the same when I got it. But the drive that I used began to slow down till it died.
tigerheart-hackers
Hey Bij, yes, length and thickness affect the transfer rate. The longer the cable, the farther data has to travel, meaning more time. As for thickness, well, usually quality cables are thick because they use heavier material inside with golden wrappings and separators. The combination does indeed affect the transfer rate, heavily.
