Upgrade music server PC?

[Gregavi]

I have a Compaq PC with a PIII;448 Mhz;512 RAM running XP Pro that I am using as a digital music server. I have my music and photo files on two 500 GB external hard drives w/USB connection hanging off the PC. The internal 160 GB drive is for OS and a few programs only. I don't use this computer for anything other than pulling music and photo viewing with a Roku Photobridge (similar to squeezebox). I'm looking to possibly upgrade this PC with whatever would make it a little faster and more efficient. One reason for my desire to upgrade is when I connect my USB hard drives, a pop-up window states that I have connected a hi-speed (USB 2) device into a port that does not support hi speed devices (or something to that effect). The USB card that I am using is, I'm pretty sure, USB 2 capable, so I'm thinking the motherboard or something else is not hi speed device capable. Would a BIOS upgrade make a difference? Pulling music off of this PC seems a little slower than when I was using my newer, faster PC. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[andrew26]

CPU socket type? RAM type? if you have LGA 755 here is a good one.

 

[Speedydowt]

hmm i wouldnt go about upgrading your pc just yet without first trying to see if you can get USB 2.0 to work, what USB card are you using? is it straight into a usb header onto the motherboard or is it a PCI usb card? Does it need drivers? A Bios update may help, but only if the USB card is plugged straight into a header on the motherboard, if it is a PCI usb card, shouldnt make any difference.

A good way to test to see if this really is slowing down the read times from your external disk would be to check file transfer speed of downloading a large amount of music with your music server by using a program called ATTO (http://kb.ciprico.com/lore/article.php?id=268)

then do the same thing with the same amount of large music with your newer pc and compare the times

If you could give your motherboard details and more about the music server that would be useful

cheers