Advice on troubleshooting USB 3.0 dropouts?

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peppergomez

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After you've tested a device on three different systems using two different lengths/make of USB 3.0 cable, what would you do next to try to troubleshoot why a RAID enclosure device constantly drops out/disconnects and then reconnects when connected via USB 3.0?

I posted this in the storage forum, but now that I think about it, this issue is not one that's specific to storage per se, so hopefully it will get more replies here.

I'm not sure what else I can do. USB 2.0 is just too slow. eSata is also an option- would that rival USB 3.0 for speed?

Thanks.
 
peppergomez said:
After you've tested a device on three different systems using two different lengths/make of USB 3.0 cable, what would you do next to try to troubleshoot why a RAID enclosure device constantly drops out/disconnects and then reconnects when connected via USB 3.0?
Click to expand...
Try a different enclosure or other USB 3.0 devices with the cable.

My gut is saying that you just have a defective RAID enclosure. The Amazon reviews for it is showing that it's a so-so quality device. Considering the price of that enclosure, it's not surprising at all that you're seeing such issue. This is further backed up by that device used in the video link you posted: Unless I'm mistaken, it appears that the user in that video has this cheap low quality storage dock which has had some very bad reviews on Newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115115

As for my own semi-useless anecdotal evidence, I have had zero issues transferring over 2TB of data over to two different Western Digital 4TB external hard drives over USB 3.0.
peppergomez said:
eSata is also an option- would that rival USB 3.0 for speed?
Click to expand...
Both options allow for the hard drive to get rather close to the max possible transfer speeds. With that said, I highly doubt USB 3.0 is the issue.
 
Let us know the specs of the 3 different USB 3.0 systems. There are known issues that can happen with USB 3.0 controllers that might be resolved with new firmware and/or drivers.

Also are there any firmware updates for your RAID enclosure?
 
At one point I made it my personal mission to find a multiple-drive enclosure with USB 3.0 connectivity that would be really stable with large file transfers.

Three enclosures across several computers in the lab later, (and yes--with many more different combinations of cable and hard drive) we went with eSATA instead. Every single one we tried had a dropout of some kind with sustained disk activity. We'd usually start to see issues around the 10 minute mark.
 
Agreed re: the quality of this enclosure. I bought it used based on someone's recommendation and now regret doing so. But I will try eSata and see if that improves things.

A search for USB 3.0 dropouts and Windows 8 and 8.1 brings a lot of returns so it seems that 3.0 reliability in Windows 8 and 8.1 is pretty shitty.
 
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