plugging a usb2 device (cardreader, flashdisk) to a non usb2 device on the motherboard would result in a popup saying that the usb2 device is plugged on a non high speed usb port. although there may be a combo of 2.0 and 1.1 usb ports on a motherboard. usually Pentium 4 and high end AMD boards with chipsets like via kt333 and kt4 and also Nvidia Nforce 2 boards have usb 2.0 ports.
you may use a usb extension less than 1 meter siguro.
usb 2.0 is backward compatible with ver 1.1 devices, although a bit slower. usually single big megabyte files transfer at a higher rate from usb device to harddisk, rather than separate bunch of files.
