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hi,
it seems to me that the file transfer (20 GB from a power mac aged 4 years) is slow: more than 2 hours to 6 gigs to a hdd (which is a normal speed on a pc or on my mac book and mac book pro). It seems to me that this is due to the fact that it may take a usb 2.0 driver, but I'm not confident, so I do not know? Thank you
A mac is not like a pc. All drivers are integrated and pre-installed.
If the mac does not go faster it may be that the port is not usb 2 but usb 1 therefore you can not improve because the stuff is like that.
You cannot upgrade your existing ports; the hardware for USB 2.0 is simply different. The Macbook that you might be having does not have any sort of PCMCIA slot or any other internal expandability other than adding new HD/RAM. So in a word, no. You're stuck with USB 1.1 until you get another computer.
Basically you can get away with cheap no-name USB2 PCI cards for the Mac, but make sure they use an NEC chipset for less hassle. Check out www.xlr8yourmac.com for reports of which cards work.
Unfortunately I've not come across any that support deep sleep if you have any unpowered USB devices attached. For example if I leave my USB2 memory card reader attached, even if no cards are mounted, then the Mac freezes and requires a hard reboot. My printer doesn't cause a problem though.