External CD writer

[GeorgeCo]

I help in a PC class which takes place in a community centre PC training room. The PCs are fairly old and I suspect that they may only have USB 1 interfaces, although they run Windows XP (don't know if Home or Prof.).
We are thinking of buying an external CD writer so that students can transfer files too big for a floppy (photos etc) between the class and home. I've got two questions:

1. Most external writers now have a USB 2 interface. Will there be a problem if the PCs only have USB 1 ? E.g. will data get lost because the interface can't keep up with the CD writing speed?
2. Will we need to install drivers or other software, or will Windows handle the drive just as it does with an external hard drive, and we can use the basic CD writing facility built in to Win XP? I don't anticipate we will need to use CD R/W discs.

George

[officespacer]

i have a jump drive that is USB 2.0, but it is compatible with USB 1.1, you can find some basic USB 2.0 info here.

I don't think that an external CD writer could or would write faster than it's connection speed, but i guess its possible. That said, most CD writing programs allow you to choose the speed that they use to write CDs anyway, so if you ran a test and found that it had errors, you could lower the burn speed to control it. However, I don't know anything about window's CD writing capabilities. I have several versions of Nero that came with CD drives i bought, though i could see why an external CD writing drive might not include such software... and XP should handle installing drivers for you in most cases.

after re-reading my reply, i don't know if i actually answered any of your questions! <img src=/S/laugh.gif border=0 alt=laugh width=15 height=15>

[Rebel]

Almost USB devices are backwards compatible, so there should be no problem. Data will be written using the SLOWER of the two interfaces - in this case USB1 - data won't get lost.
If you have drivers for the CD writer, I would install them. The manufacturer's drivers are in most cases, much superior to the native Windows drivers.

[GeorgeCo]

Thank you John & John. I guess we'll go ahead and buy one and see how it goes.
No doubt I'll return if there is a problem!

George