Silly me, all of me research showed that USB 3.0 should work out of the box with openSUSE 13.1 (with Linux in general).
My PC does not have USB3 so I went to MicroCenter and bought a PCIe USB 3 card and a Seagate external USB3 HDD.
The devices are:
Vantec 4-Port USB 3.0 PCI-e card, UGT-PC345
Seagate “Backup PLus” USB 3.0, 3TB external HDD, STCA 3000101
Hardware info shows the PCIe card as:
Renesas Technology Corp. uPD720201 USB 3.0 Host Controller
When I plug the Seagate drive into the PCIe card’s external USB 3 connector nothing happens.
Device notifier does not pop up telling me a device was connected.
The Seagate drive uses an external power adapter - which IS plugged in.
HMM, I have another Seagate ext drive that is USB 2.
Nothing happens when I plug that drive into the USB3 PCIe card’s external connector,
but when I plug it into any of the PC’s USB2 connectors, Device Notifier pops up
to allow me to mount it.
So is the PCIe card itself not working - even though Hardware Info (Kinfocenter) shows it
in the PCI List. The card does NOT show in the USB Devices List.
This is weird…18 hours later it works. Here are the details… Yesterday after posting my original message to this thread: - I ran Yast/Hardware to satisfy myself that the machine was actually seeing the new USB 3.0 PCIe card - it was. - I plugged the new USB 3.0 external drive into one of the machines existing USB 2.0 ports to ensure the new HDD actually worked - it did. - I turned off the machine and went to bed. - This morning I turned on the machine and the external USB 3.0 drive plugged in to the new USB 3.0 PCIe card was instantly recognized. So, why does it work this morning but not last night? Did running Yast/Hardware set/reset something? Did plugging the new USB 3.0 external drive into one of the USB 2.0 ports set/reset something? Is/was the card not making good electrical contact with either the PCIe slot or the the card’s 4 pin Molex power connector? I don’t know the answer… but I’m tempted to open the machine and recheck all of the connections… At the moment I’m copying 600GB from my old USB 2.0 external drive to the new USB 3.0 external drive. The KDE Notifier shows the copy is averaging about 31.4 MiB/s (USB 2 → USB 3). I’m not sure if this is typical for USB2 reading or not? Once this copy is finished (another few hours) I’ll try copying from my internal SATA drive to the external USB 3.0 drive; If I don’t get a copy speed a lot higher than 31 MiB/s (SATA → USB 3) I’m going to be very disappointed.
OK…what happened to all of my formatting in the previous post?
It was nicely laid out, even in the “preview”, but all of the line breaks disappeared when it was posted.
On 2013-12-25 17:56, xlis wrote:
>
> Here are the data throughput results for copying between the HDD
> devices on MY hardware:
>
> - USB 2 -> USB 3, approx 30MB/s, USB 2 read speed is the limiter
>
> - SATA to USB 3, approx 80 MB/s, SATA read speed is the limiter
>
> - USB 3 to SATA, varied from 120 MB/s burst to 75 MB/s typical, SATA
> write speed is the limiter
Interesting…
But as I have eSATA plugs, and my external media also have eSATA, and I have nothing that uses USB3,
I guess will not get myself an USB3 card. Not yet
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Elessar))
Well heck…
Today’s kernel update caused the USB 3.0 PCIe card to stop working.
The xhci module is still loaded, but the card is completely dead.
Previously, as long as the external USB 3 drive was plugged in to
the USB 3 card, and powered up, before the PC was powered
up, the PCIe USB 3 card and drive worked fine.
After today’s kernel update (to 3.11.10-7.1 via YOU) the USB 3.0 card is
completely in-op. The USB 3 drive works when plugged in to
a USB 2 port.
Well, it seems to be “magic”, and I don’t know why,
but this “fixed” the issue:
Plugged the external USB 3 drive into a USB 2 port. It was recognized, and I mounted it.
Powered down everything - external USB 3 drive and PC.
Waited 2 minutes.
Plugged the external USB 3 drive into the USB 3 PCIe card’s external connector.
Powered on the external USB 3 drive and waited for it to spin up.
Powered on the PC. The external USB 3.0 drive was recognized.
Why the drive had to be plugged in to a USB 2 port once before it would
work in the USB 3 port makes no sense to me. But now, even when all devices
are powered off, then powered on, the USB 3 drive works in the USB 3 connector
as long as it’s plugged in and powered on before the PC is powered on.
It’s weird, but at least I get USB 3 performance from the drive.
The Online Update today (via YOU) to autofs 5.0.8 has resolved all of the
mount and hot-plug issues with this USB 3 PCIe card. External devices
can now be plugged, unplugged, and powered on/off at will; the devices
are now always recognized - and recognized as USB 3.
On 2014-03-19 00:46, xlis wrote:
>
> Update.
>
> The Online Update today (via YOU) to autofs 5.0.8 has resolved all of
> the
> mount and hot-plug issues with this USB 3 PCIe card. External devices
> can now be plugged, unplugged, and powered on/off at will; the devices
> are now always recognized - and recognized as USB 3.
Oh? That’s a nice surprise!
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)
