Salt * Wet * Fish

Recently I had a spate of my computer hanging on me. This usually occurs when I have the memory cards reader plugged in for a while. Its definitely not the reader, because I have used at least 2 different readers so far. I suspect its the 4 port USB2 card that I am using, but its really working fine.

Anyway, I recently got my hands on a USB2 100GB 2.5″ HDD. Plugged it in and it works like a charm, of course. Then my computer started hanging on me again, especially when activities are heavy on that HDD.

Turns out that the most possible cause is that both my USB wireless adapter and the USB HDD are fighting for attention from the computer! I knew this before when I installed my wireless point that it took up quite some CPU cycles, hence its constantly seek attention from the computer. Plug in a removable storage device like my HDD and it also seeks attention constantly from my computer. Both of these it just too much for the USB card to take, I guess so.

My solution? I will try moving my wireless adapter to the slower USB 1.1 ports. I should not see any degradation of my internet speed as I am only getting 1.5 Mbps on my broadband only and its less that what the old USB port can provide. Just hope that it does conflict with the attention seeking mouse which is also attached to it.

Going forward, I think that I will buy internal wireless cards instead of using USB wireless versions for my desktop computers. This way whatever resources it needs is isolated by the card and its does not have to fight for it with other devices. I guess USB ports are not meant to share well with the demands needed for a networking device like the wireless adapter.