If you plug a USB 2 device into a USB 1 port, Windows will kindly tell you that "This device could perform faster if plugged into a USB 2 port" or some such message.
That will confirm a USB 1 port!
You can also check Device Manager - expand USB Controllers, and if you have an ENHANCED USB Host Controller, the system has High Speed USB (USB 2.0) capability.
To get around the problem that WingCoFo quite rightly brings up, you can actually mount the USB disk as a folder on your existing hard disk. This will fix that disk into that folder, so getting around the drive letter problem.
Here's an article that explains in detail how to do it. It isn't difficult, just longer than I care to spend right now!
The only points to note are that your existing disk must be formatted with NTFS, and you can only mount the disk into an empty folder - say C : \ External Disk 1, for example.
Then Windows treats the external disk (when present) as if it is part of your C drive. When the drive is unplugged, the folder will still appear as normal, but will be inaccessible.
Mounting the disk in this way doesn't affect the way data is stored on the new disk - so if you plugged it into another PC you could see it normally as a drive letter (or indeed you could mount it as a folder on that PC also).
Neat.
SD