Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

nMP and USB 3 grrrr

theSeb

theSeb

macrumors 604
Original poster
Aug 10, 2010
7,466
1,893
none
I am so tired of my USB 3 drives disconnecting when the nMP goes to sleep. It does not happen every time. Instead if happens randomly a couple of times a day.

I have a 2TB 2.5" USB 3 drive that houses my iTunes library.

In addition I have the following devices connected:
Promise Pegasus R4 (via TB)
Lacie 2Big (via TB)
G-Tech 3 GB 3.5" (via eSATA using Lacie TB --> eSATA hub)

There are no issues with any of the 3 above disconnecting ever. At first I thought it was the USB 3 hub that I was using, but I have the same issue when the USB 3 drive is connected directly to the nMP. This is really annoying because the 3 desktop drives are usually powered off when I am not working on the computer, but I keep iTunes running to serve media around the house. Whenever the drive "disconnects" I have to restart iTunes, even though it shows up again by itself in Finder.

Is it just me, or does this happen to anyone else? I have disabled "put drives to sleep whenever possible".
 
theSeb said:
Hmmmm.... it could be and if it is, then it seems like I am stuck with it. I assumed this was a simple driver issue, but it does not seem like it according to your link.
Click to expand...

It's not a simple driver issue for sure. It happens with Intel / FrescoLogic / ASMedia USB 3.0 chipsets. It happens on Apple Laptops, Minis, New MPro's / c MPro's, HP Laptops, MSI Laptops, Asus Laptops and motherboards. It happens with OS X, Linux, Windows...

It's a USB 3.0 thing that's complicated by the integrated electronics of external enclosures.

That said, better drivers would help a lot. It's not a complete nightmare but is knocking on the door where certain combinations of hardware & OS's are involved. Some people hit the sweet spot and never have ANY problems at all. I personally have ALOMST ZERO issues, but I do get the famous "Disk not ejected properly" notification upon waking from sleep. It remounts and never causes any other issues than the notification. If I could turn that damned thing off I'd declare ZERO issues on my cMP. On that note, there is a fix for that too. Change to a different drive enclosure.
 
Last edited:
crjackson2134 said:
It's not a simple driver issue for sure. It happens with Intel / FrescoLogic / ASMedia USB 3.0 chipsets. It happens on Apple Laptops, Minis, New MPro's / c MPro's, HP Laptops, MSI Laptops, Asus Laptops and motherboards. It happens with OS X, Linux, Windows...

It's a USB 3.0 thing that's complicated by the integrated electronics of external enclosures.

That said, better drivers would help a lot. It's not a complete nightmare but is knocking on the door where certain combinations of hardware & OS's are involved. Some people hit the sweet spot and never have ANY problems at all. I personally have ALOMST ZERO issues, but I do get the famous "Disk not ejected properly" notification upon waking from sleep. It remounts and never causes any other issues than the notification. If I could turn that damned thing off I'd declare ZERO issues on my cMP. On that note, there is a fix for that too. Change to a different drive enclosure.
Click to expand...
This is actually the issue that I get on the nMP and it does mess up iTunes. It's what I meant by disconnecting. This is a WD portable drive in a non-removable enclosure. Interestingly enough, now that I think about, I never have these issues with the 2 3rd party enclosures that I use.
 
theSeb said:
This is actually the issue that I get on the nMP and it does mess up iTunes. It's what I meant by disconnecting. This is a WD portable drive in a non-removable enclosure. Interestingly enough, now that I think about, I never have these issues with the 2 3rd party enclosures that I use.
Click to expand...

It happens on nearly all external USB 3.0 enclosures. flowrider has found that the problem doesn't happen with the Hornettek Viper USB 3.0 enclosure and a Seagate drive.

Refer to this post; click on each of the links and read them.
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/21032858/
 
Happens all the time with my Glyph USB 3 external drive and rMBP. Luckily, its never done it when data was being written
 
crjackson2134 said:
It happens on nearly all external USB 3.0 enclosures. flowrider has found that the problem doesn't happen with the Hornettek Viper USB 3.0 enclosure and a Seagate drive.

Refer to this post; click on each of the links and read them.
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/21032858/
Click to expand...

Thanks for the links. I am going to test my Oyen Digital Mini Pro thoroughly over the next few days. I am sure that I never had this issue with that enclosure.
 
theSeb said:
I am so tired of my USB 3 drives disconnecting when the nMP goes to sleep. It does not happen every time. Instead if happens randomly a couple of times a day.

I have a 2TB 2.5" USB 3 drive that houses my iTunes library.

In addition I have the following devices connected:
Promise Pegasus R4 (via TB)
Lacie 2Big (via TB)
G-Tech 3 GB 3.5" (via eSATA using Lacie TB --> eSATA hub)

There are no issues with any of the 3 above disconnecting ever. At first I thought it was the USB 3 hub that I was using, but I have the same issue when the USB 3 drive is connected directly to the nMP. This is really annoying because the 3 desktop drives are usually powered off when I am not working on the computer, but I keep iTunes running to serve media around the house. Whenever the drive "disconnects" I have to restart iTunes, even though it shows up again by itself in Finder.

Is it just me, or does this happen to anyone else? I have disabled "put drives to sleep whenever possible".
Click to expand...

There is this article saying that the USB 3.0 on the new Mac Pro is not native to the chipset.

http://macperformanceguide.com/MacPro2013-USB3-performance-limitations.html
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18608264/

Though I am not sure if these articles are related to the ext drive disconnection issue.
 
Macsonic said:
There is this article saying that the USB 3.0 on the new Mac Pro is not native to the chipset.

http://macperformanceguide.com/MacPro2013-USB3-performance-limitations.html
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18608264/

Though I am not sure if these articles are related to the ext drive disconnection issue.
Click to expand...

It's not because of the Fresco Logic chipset. It happens on Apple Laptops and the Mini and the iMac as well. They all have Intel chipsets with native USB 3.0.
 
Last edited:
crjackson2134 said:
It's not the chipset. It happens on Apple Laptops and the Mini and the iMac as well. They all have Intel chipsets with native USB 3.0.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads up. I thought that in the Macbook Airs, MBPros, Mac Minis or iMacs the USB 3.0 was native. One time I was using a client's iMac and using USB 3.0 it can boot up from an external HD so I thought it was native. But I guess your right. Learned something new today. :)
 
Macsonic said:
Thanks for the heads up. I thought that in the Macbook Airs, MBPros, Mac Minis or iMacs the USB 3.0 was native. One time I was using a client's iMac and using USB 3.0 it can boot up from an external HD so I thought it was native. But I guess your right. Learned something new today. :)
Click to expand...


You misunderstood what I meant, I wasn't clear.

It is native... The Intel chipset is the native chipset for the systems you mentioned.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back