very slow external HD

I was looking at this external HD from tigerdirect.
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicati...=Email-_-CanadaMain-_-CANEM1261-_-electronics

however, it states that the usb2.0 transfer rate is 60mb/sec!!! why is this sooooo slow compared to the typical 480mb/sec?

 

That is 480M bit/s (Mb/s).

Now, 1Mb = 0.125MB, so 480Mb/s = 60MB/s (Theoretical)

The drive will never top 40MB/s. Will give average transfer rates of like 25-35MB/s through USB 2.0.

The drive also supports eSATA. So if you have a eSATA port, or can get one of those eSATA PCMCIA cards, etc., you can utilize the full potential of the drive (SATA I/II), but you'll have to power the drive through AC, whether data transfer is through eSATA or USB 2.0.

 

That rating is in megabytes per second. USB2.0 max transfer rate is 480 megabits per second. 480 megabits per second is equivelant to 60 megabytes per second. A byte is a collection of 8 bits. Think of a bit like a single digit of a number, and a byte as the entire number. We use a capital B for bytes and lowercase b for bits.

In reality you won't see anything even close to 480mb/s or 60MB/s with a USB device.

 

it all makes sense now! thanks. i was just completely glancing over the "Mbit" part...
dont have an eSATA port for my laptop at this point in time...