I need technical help

[charyuop]

I know this is a matter kinda parallel to WinMX coz it is not directly related to the program, but it also makes so it prevents people from downloading from me.
My computer is kinda old (imagine it has a speed  of barely 533 mHz). My HD is, if all free, 14 GB and that makes you understand what I can keep on it once you take away room for windows and some programs that I use.
Thus I bought an external HD connected through USB port which is 100GB thinking that this way I was fine....FALSE! The data transfer is to slow (installing a game on the external HD takes up to 5 times longer than on the inside HD). Of course I store all my movies and games on the external HD, but I cannot share them as I wish. If someone starts downloading from the external HD I get disconnecte or more often my computer simply freezes.
Does anyone have a suggestion on how I could get the data transfer faster so that I can actually share all my files and not only the 2 or 3 that I am downloading?

[KM]

you are probably using USB 1.1, which has very limited transfer speeds (you wont get more than about 1MB/s) - this shouldn't be an issue for file sharing though as i doubt your connection can send that fast

however for it to go faster, chances are that the drive is USB 2.0, and may even be high speed USB 2.0, you can get an expansion card with USB 2.0 ports and put that in your computer if you want