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USB 3.0?

Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2013 9:36 pm
by ohaya
Hi,

I guess that I'm a bit behind the time, but I just got a new laptop this Christmas (a Toshiba C855-S5308) that has a USB 3.0 port (a single USB 3.0 port - it has two other USB 2.0 ports), so since then, I picked up a USB 3.0 drive (a Toshiba Canvio) and a USB flash drive that has a USB 3.0 interface (a Topram 32GB).

The two drives seem to be work well with the laptop, but, with just 1 USB 3.0 port on the laptop, I couldn't have both the Canvio drive and the USB flash drive plugged in at the same time to a USB 3.0 port, so I got a USB 3.0 hub (an "EZOWare"), and things have gone downhill since then.

With the hub plugged into the laptop's USB 3.0 port, and with both the Canvio and the flash drive plugged into the hub, the laptop would constantly lock up when doing transfers. Most of the time, one or the other drive would disappear from Windows. I have the laptop in a stand, with an external monitor, so this was a real pain, because everytime it locks up, I have to pull the laptop out of the stand, open up the cover, etc.

Googling around (after-the-fact, of course), I found that lots of people have similar problems with USB 3.0, so I was wondering, are these types of things/problems generally (maybe ALWAYS) the case when using USB 3.0?? Or is the hub that I got just a junk one? Do other hubs work better/have no problems?

One strange thing is that I've been doing this lately: Instead of plugging the hub into the laptop's USB 3.0 port, I plugged it into one of the laptop's *USB 2.0* ports. This actually seems to be working better, i.e., no hangs, etc. I'm planning to do some tests with both the Canvio and the flash drive plugged into the USB 3.0 hub, and doing inter-drive file transfers.

Thanks,
Jim

Re: USB 3.0?

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 4:18 am
by ohaya
Hi,

FYI, I just completed an image of my Win7 partition successfully using the Canvio drive plugged into the USB 3.0 hub that was plugged into the laptop USB 3.0 port.

Also, I had installed an updated driver for the "Intel(R) USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller" in Windows, but still had problems copying large files in Windows, but then I did Windows Update, and there were a few hardware-related updates, which I installed, and then I did one test large file transfer, and that one seemed to work.

So it seems like the problems I saw may've been driver-related, but we'll see :(...

Jim

Re: USB 3.0?

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2013 5:08 pm
by TeraByte Support
glad you got it worked out... as far as chipsets, in the past NEC has been
very good.

"ohaya" wrote in message news:4249@public.tech.misc...

Hi,

FYI, I just completed an image of my Win7 partition successfully using the
Canvio drive plugged into the USB 3.0 hub that was plugged into the laptop
USB 3.0 port.

Also, I had installed an updated driver for the "Intel(R) USB 3.0 eXtensible
Host Controller" in Windows, but still had problems copying large files in
Windows, but then I did Windows Update, and there were a few
hardware-related updates, which I installed, and then I did one test large
file transfer, and that one seemed to work.

So it seems like the problems I saw may've been driver-related, but we'll
see

![:(]({SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_sad.gif)

....

Jim


Re: USB 3.0?

Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2013 4:09 am
by ohaya
Hi,

One of the main reasons for my post was to try to find out if, in general, USB 3.0 was generally problematic, especially USB 3.0 hubs. What are your (and others') experience? It seems like USB 2.0 was much more stable and reliable, even though slower.

FYI, my main problem, besides the drivers, turned out to be the external drive I was working with, a Toshiba Canvio 1.5TB USB 3.0 drive. Toshiba apparently has firmware that does power management, which would spin the drive down after about 5 minutes. Then, if you tried to access the drive, it'd take about 30 seconds for the drive to spin up again.

It was really strange. I'd open up a simple txt file, Notepad would open with a blank page, then about 30 secs later, the text would show up.

Anyway, i was able to get around this, by using a small batch file running under Windows Task Scheduler, that would create a new file on the drive every 4 minutes, and then delete the file. The drive then remains active all the time, as long as my task was running (I disable it when I'm not going to be using the drive). If you google "Canvio sleep", you'll find lots of posts, and Toshiba doesn't offer a way to turn that APM off.

Anyway, things seem to be working ok now, including going through I USB 3.0 hub that I bought (an "EZOWare").

I guess that the thing that I'm still puzzled about is that with the USB 3.0 hubs, they also have a controller chip, and some of them (the Uspeed and Plugable ones) actually have firmware upgrades. The one I got, the el-cheapo EZOWard does not.

Later,
Jim

Re: USB 3.0?

Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2013 6:25 am
by TeraByte Support(PP)
I've used USB 3.0 drives for a while now for backups. Currrently, I'm using three different models (five drives) and they all seem to work well. Once in a while, one will be frozen and needs reset, but I don't know if it's the drive, the controller (on-board) or what I'm doing with it. As far as being reliable, the backups have all been good and I haven't had any errors with them. I think all of my drives sleep automatically too. It does cause waiting a few seconds at times, but it hasn't caused any problems.

I haven't gotten a USB 3.0 hub yet, but probably will in the near future since my main 2.0 hub is wearing out. I never found my USB 2.0 hubs to be what I would call really stable and reliable -- just tolerable.

Re: USB 3.0?

Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2013 6:34 am
by ohaya
Hi Paul,

When I first got the drive, a couple of weeks ago, I did some test copies of large files (some VMware guests' disk files > 18GB), and that was when I encountered the problems, which included:

- Copy failing during the copy (source or target drive or directory would disappear)
- Corrupted copies

Copying small files was fine, but when I ran the large file copies, I'd invariably run into problems, and found that this was not that uncommon, e.g.:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/For ... 37697f62b/

I've also started using Teracopy, rather than using just Windows copy. That at least tests the copied files, and give you a CRC for each file, but even with that, when the directory or drive "disappeared", Teracopy couldn't do much to help.

What I've found best (and this was with and without the hub) was getting the latest Intel drivers and also updating from Windows Update (some driver framework updates), and also set the Policies for the USB 3.0 drives in Device Manager (Windows 7) to "Quick Removal".

FYI, if you do look at hubs, it looks like the best ones are either the Plugable or Uspeed ones (you can find them on Amazon).

Later,
Jim

Re: USB 3.0?

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 5:25 pm
by ohaya
Hi,

Man, I'm really starting to wonder if USB 3.0 is just "not ready for prime-time". I just got another USB 3.0 drive in, and even when directly connected into the USB 3.0 port, it keeps dropping out. Plugging it into USB 2.0 port is fine.

So, so far, I've had problems with a USB 3.0 hub, and a USB 3.0 drive.

I'm starting to wonder if the USB 3.0 port on this Toshiba laptop is bad, or maybe the drivers. I just installed the latest Intel drivers a couple of days ago (just released, 1.0.7, I think).

Sigh...

Jim

Re: USB 3.0?

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 8:17 pm
by mjnelson99
I know when I connected my USB 3 card reader to the USB 3
port on my laptop, the IFW image was corrupted.

The same reader & SD card on a USB 2 port came out fine.
Not sure why.

Using that port interferes with using my mouse so I would
not use it regularly anyway.
Mary

On 1/22/2013 11:25 AM, ohaya wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Man, I'm really starting to wonder if USB 3.0 is just "not ready for prime-time". I just got another USB 3.0 drive in, and even when directly connected into the USB 3.0 port, it keeps dropping out. Plugging it into USB 2.0 port is fine.
>
> So, so far, I've had problems with a USB 3.0 hub, and a USB 3.0 drive.
>
> I'm starting to wonder if the USB 3.0 port on this Toshiba laptop is bad, or maybe the drivers. I just installed the latest Intel drivers a couple of days ago (just released, 1.0.7, I think).
>
> Sigh...
>
> Jim
>
>

Re: USB 3.0?

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 11:38 pm
by AlanD
On 2013-01-22 3:17 PM, mjnelson99 wrote:
> I know when I connected my USB 3 card reader to the USB 3
> port on my laptop, the IFW image was corrupted.
>
> The same reader & SD card on a USB 2 port came out fine.
> Not sure why.
>
> Using that port interferes with using my mouse so I would
> not use it regularly anyway.
> Mary
>
> On 1/22/2013 11:25 AM, ohaya wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Man, I'm really starting to wonder if USB 3.0 is just "not ready for prime-time". I just got another USB 3.0 drive in, and even when directly connected into the USB 3.0 port, it keeps dropping out. Plugging it into USB 2.0 port is fine.
>>
>> So, so far, I've had problems with a USB 3.0 hub, and a USB 3.0 drive.
>>
>> I'm starting to wonder if the USB 3.0 port on this Toshiba laptop is bad, or maybe the drivers. I just installed the latest Intel drivers a couple of days ago (just released, 1.0.7, I think).
>>
>> Sigh...
>>
>> Jim
>>
>>
>
>
FWIW, I have had zero problems (for 18 months) with my "Plugable" USB
3.0 dock and USB 3.0 expansion card. I have used it for everything,
including image storage, and read/writes are fast.

AlanD

Re: USB 3.0?

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 1:17 am
by ohaya
Hi Mary,

I've been wondering where you've been :)... A belated Happy New Year :)!

My understanding is that USB 3.0 actually has both a USB 2.0 path/connection and USB 3.0 path connection, so when you plug a USB 3.0 device into a USB 2.0 port, it's almost exactly like plugging a USB 2.0 device into the USB 2.0 port.

The things I've worked with (hub and drives) do work fine if I plug them into one of the USB 2.0 ports. It's just when I try to use them on the laptop's USB 3.0 port that things start going haywire :(.

I hadn't started using any USB 3.0 stuff until recently, and I've been amazed (in a not positive way) that USB 3.0 has been around for a couple of years, and yet the devices are still somewhat hit-or-miss, at least for me.

Jim


mjnelson99 wrote:
> I know when I connected my USB 3 card reader to the USB 3
> port on my laptop, the IFW image was corrupted.
>
> The same reader & SD card on a USB 2 port came out fine.
> Not sure why.
>
> Using that port interferes with using my mouse so I would
> not use it regularly anyway.
> Mary
>
> On 1/22/2013 11:25 AM, ohaya wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Man, I'm really starting to wonder if USB 3.0 is just "not ready for
> prime-time". I just got another USB 3.0 drive in, and even when directly
> connected into the USB 3.0 port, it keeps dropping out. Plugging it into
> USB 2.0 port is fine.
> >
> > So, so far, I've had problems with a USB 3.0 hub, and a USB 3.0 drive.
> >
> > I'm starting to wonder if the USB 3.0 port on this Toshiba laptop is bad,
> or maybe the drivers. I just installed the latest Intel drivers a couple
> of days ago (just released, 1.0.7, I think).
> >
> > Sigh...
> >
> > Jim
> >
> >