Question How do I figure out what version of Firewire my old laptop has?

[Daboa]

I have an external USB 3.0 HDD. My old laptop (Toshiba A215-s4747) has only USB 2.0 ports and I'm trying to figure out if I have any options for getting around that bottleneck. My laptop has Firewire, but the specs don't say which version, so I'm not sure if getting a firewire-to-USB3.0 adapter would help. How do I find out what version of Firewire I have? Thanks.

Update: I found some documentation indicating that my laptop has 4-pin firewire, which it looks like maxes at 400Mbps, which is slower than USB 2.0. So firewire probably won't help me

 

[popatim]

You have FW400 as you've already guessed.
You do have an expresscard slot but I could not find if its version 1 or 2. (2.5Gbit/s vs 5Gbits/s) so can't say if its worth buying a usb3 expresscard or not. I would guess it's version 1 since v. 2 wasn't released until 2009 and your laptop specs put it around 2005-ish.