I am new to usb-c, so how do I make one of them an I/O port

Framework Laptop 13
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I am new to usb-c, so how do I make one of them an I/O port. Both of my usb-c ports seem to only support charging.

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What are you trying to connect?
USB-C is just like other USB, you just plug in a USB device and it should connect. For high speed data you need to check what your cable supports, but most any cable should do basic USB 2.0 speeds.

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3

I have a lot of devices running through a usb hub, that my old computer had no problem with. I am connecting that hub with a usb-a to usb-c cable. OK I hooked it up using a straight USB-A cable and it is working fine, but my understanding was that USB-c was going to give me higher transfer rates. Is there a USB-c hub that I should be using?

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I now seem to be connecting to my external drive but it is taking forever just to read and completely recognize it.

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Am now copying photo files at about 1MB/s.

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USB-A to C cables can vary from decent to horrible. Some can be useful for little more than charging. And depending on what your hub can do, you may want a C to C cable to get full potential. One that matches your hub’s capabilities. To get higher transfer rates from USB-C everything in the chain needs to support the higher rate. Laptop, cable, hub, device.

I don’t have a particular USB hub to recommend. Maybe others could recommend a few. I believe there is at least one thread on USB docks here. You could look there.

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OK, thanks. It’s working but will take another 14 hours to copy those photos. Have been a photographer since the late 60’s so have a lot of them.

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Sounds like something is wrong. Maybe the cable is bad. Or there is some other issue or incompatibility.

At that rate, you might want to plug it in directly to just get it done quicker.

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I’m retired so have nothing but time…lol

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After reading the discussion about the cable, I also thought of a little tip for cheap cables. The USB-C port is not fully occupied on many cheap cables, so it often helps to turn the USB-C connector 180°.

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The main issue something does not work when copying over USB-C, is a bad cable.
Make sure you got a decent cable, and it should work.

Of course, you you are copying from an old disk/device, which supports only USB-A v1, it may take very long to copy over photos :}

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For pure data transfer they are equivalent until you get to Thunderbolt/USB4. USB3.2 10Gbit can be done over both usb A and C. Unfortunately usb2 and charge only usb.c cables do exist which will limit you to 480Mbit or no data transfer respectively. It’s a bit of a mess.

Of course the speed the device can actually output the data at is also a factor, a spinning 2.5" external hard-drive won’t magically be faster just because you have a 10Gbit usb3 link instead of a 5Gbit one as it is much slower than that itself.

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I would bet that the cable and/or the hub is USB2 only.

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