You have been reading too many adverts. Most devices will run far slower than the maximum(!) speed specified by the USB 1 or 2 protocols and it's possible to have a USB 2 device running on USB 2 hardware at less than the USB 1 maximum. It depends on the device, the software, and much more. Whatever you do you mustn't read the USB 1 speed spec, the USB 2 speed spec and expect a speed increase of USB2/USB1.
The rated speeds are maxima and don't allow for management overheads. USB doesn't handle sustained high transfer rates well, you want Firewire or SCSI for that - they have the advantage that they don't load the host CPU anything like as much as USB. The USB2 standard incorporates the USB1 standard, so any USB1 device is technically also a USB2 device. Why they decided to call the two speeds high speed and full speed, with high speed being faster than full speed, we will probably never know. Obviously the host can't receive data faster than the client can send it, or vice versa, and we agree the nominal speeds aren't achievable data transfer rates. But USB2 high speed potentially delivers in the order of 20 to 40 times the speed of (USB1.1) full speed if the client can make full use of the bandwidth.
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