man, the ports do matter. In my case, m using an asus m3n78em and a zebronics korea cabinet. I have seagate 160gb usb harddrive. Whenever i plug the hdd into the front panel port it shows me that
THIS DEVICE CAN PERFORM FASTER
and my hdd transfer speed is slow.
this is because the cable which connects the front usb to the header of ur mobo isnt a usb 2.0 cable but a 1.1 cable. Unless the cable is 2.0 it will run in low speed only.
On the other hand when u connect ur hdd to the back ports of ur mobo it works fine , because there is no cable connection between the usb port and the motherboard header.
In other words the back panel usb port is embedded in your mobo itself . Thats the reason
The working of your front usb port depends on the cabinet. If u have a good quality cabinet like that of primesource, cooler master, etc., then surely u will get a good front panel port. On the contrary for cabbys like mercury, zebby, etc. you may or may not get.
For instance, i bot the same above zeby korea cabby for my brother b4 6 months. the front ports in his pc works excellent.
Having this in mind i bot the same cabby for my pc upgradation. But unforuntately its not working properly. I dont know the reason. May be in the course of time the zebby idiots started to give worst cables.
But there is one way to sort out this issue. Get a proper usb 2 cable and connect it ur cabinet. It requires soldering. But i havent heard any1 doing this. Try it or take it to a chiplevel computer engineer and get it done..