In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

Would you want to hang a drive on the kind of USB port circa 2000?

usb 2 existed then, so yes.

however, macs had firewire for several years prior, which was faster
than usb 2 and *muuuuuuuch* faster than usb 1.1.

The Acer had a firewire card fitted but I found I never needed to use
it.

why not?

firewire would have been faster than dealing with usb 2, especially
back then when the early usb chipsets were not all that great.

not only that, but bus-powered firewire drives worked exceptionally
well, easily supporting two and sometimes three drives, all connected
to a single firewire port.