WD Caviar Green in external enclosure only functional in USB 2 ports

Hello all

I recently sold my stationary, but decided to keep my internal hard drives and turn them into externals so that I would be able to use them with my laptop for backup and long-term storage.

I ended up buying two Raidsonic Icy Box IB-373: IB-373U3

My hard drives are 2TB and 4TB, both Western Digital Caviar Green.

Now, when I plug the 4TB drive into either of the two enclosures, it works perfectly fine in my USB 2 port, but when I plug it into my USB 3 ports it is extremely slow, and often times out, when I try to copy anything to it. It usually transfers a few MB's and then stalls, and then transfers again, until at some point it times out. I can easily watch videos that I have on it though.

I have tested my USB 3 ports using another USB 3 enabled external drive and it worked perfectly fine and achieved expectable speeds, so I know my ports and my laptop are not at fault.

My question is whether this could be a problem with my hard drives? It seems unlikely that both the enclosures would be faulty, but it could be. Sadly I cannot test my 2TB drive before I have backed everything up on it, but I will be doing so shortly and then testing it. Until then, any help or tips is greatly appreciated.

Edit: the other external I tested with was a 2.5" kingston SSD in an external enclosure that followed when I bought it.

I just remembered now that the first time I plugged my 4TB external into one of the USB 3 ports it worked fine, although at USB 2 speeds. I have not been able to replicate this since.

I don't have a solution, but I can tell you I have the same problem with an external enclosure. I think it has something to do with the UASP support.

I have now fixed the 2TB drive and tested it, and the result is the exact same. Times out on the USB3 ports when transferring files, but otherwise works fine. No problems in USB2 ports.

NavyLCDR said:

I don't have a solution, but I can tell you I have the same problem with an external enclosure. I think it has something to do with the UASP support.

So if I get the money back for these and buy 2 without UASP support, they should work just fine?
I have been googling around but I can't find anyone with a similar problem. A lot of people with drives not showing up, but none where only copying/cutting are affected.

Ulverbeast said:

So if I get the money back for these and buy 2 without UASP support, they should work just fine?
I have been googling around but I can't find anyone with a similar problem. A lot of people with drives not showing up, but none where only copying/cutting are affected.

Can't say for sure, but I can tell you that my older USB enclosures (including USB3) enclosures that do not have UASP support work just fine.

NavyLCDR said:

Can't say for sure, but I can tell you that my older USB enclosures (including USB3) enclosures that do not have UASP support work just fine.

Just tried updating my chipset and booting up the computer with the external plugged in and turned on, still no dice. I will try swapping them in for some USB3 non-UASP externals, hopefully that'll solve the issue.

Thanks!

Hi,

When the drive is plugged into a USB 3.0 port do you see a ''USB attached SCSI (UAS) mass storage device entry in "Storage Controllers, Device Manager ?

According to the manufacturer:

The fast USB 3.0 port with UASP support allows data transfer rates of up to 5 Gbit/s and ensures that even large amounts of data can be transferred quickly and without problems. The enclosure supports SATA I/II/III up to 6 Gbit/s and can therefore fully use the USB 3.0 standard.

Cheers,

fdegrove said:

Hi,

When the drive is plugged into a USB 3.0 port do you see a ''USB attached SCSI (UAS) mass storage device entry in "Storage Controllers, Device Manager ?

Yes, when it is plugged in I see this entry.
I just tested the drive on another computer and it works fine with high speeds there, so it definitely seems to be an issue with my computer, maybe the drivers.

Hi,

I just tested the drive on another computer and it works fine with high speeds there, so it definitely seems to be an issue with my computer, maybe the drivers.

Quite possibly. Can you check if these are different compared to the machine that works OK with the drives ?

Cheers,

fdegrove said:

Hi,



Quite possibly. Can you check if these are different compared to the machine that works OK with the drives ?

Cheers,

I would love to, but as I understand it USB 3 and UASP are both supposed to be natively supported by Windows 10. I can try plugging in the drives to both computers and see in Device Manager whether there is a difference in drivers/versions that they run off, but other than that I am stumped as to how to research this further. Any ideas?