MP 6,1 Why my MacPro 6,1 disconnects all USB devices after a week of uptime?

[vett93]

If I keep my MacPro 6,1 up for over a week, I would wake up one morning and find all USB devices have been disconnected. All my USB devices are connected to my MacPro via powered USB hubs. Some of them have their own power supplies. How do I find out what caused the MacPro to disconnect them? Is there a way to reconnect them without rebooting the MacPro?

It did not do this when it was new. But it happens regularly nowadays. Any pointers would be appreciated.

 

[th0masp]

Might be the OS - are you keeping up with system updates? I had that with a few old releases back in the day and it always took a long while till the problem was acknowledged and fixed while the forums knew it all along. Main reason I went from updating regularly to basically never. When it happened it was bad like drives disconnecting while I was accessing them.

I've not seen this in years now across my various computers and certainly not with my current setup with all my external devices sans tablet connected through two hubs, all powered by the Trashcan.

The other possibility is that you have a developing hardware issue right there. Perhaps there's a way to diagnose if e.g. the I/O board has taken a hit?

 

[vett93]

What Mac OS version do you use now, if I may ask?

 

[th0masp]

What Mac OS version do you use now, if I may ask?

Mojave in my case - but without any 2020 security patches. The USB troubles I ran into happened much earlier though - Lion, Mavericks, around these times. I think I my have joined these forums initially to solve them...

There's a service manual for the Trashcan floating around these forums. You may want to track that down to see if there are any procedures to diagnose if it's a hardware issue.

 

[vett93]

Mojave worked very nicely with my Trashcan. Every since I upgraded it to Catalina, I started to have a number of problems. USB disconnect is one of them. Apple Mail would fail to read my Yahoo mail after a day of uptime, and I have to restsart Apple Mail to continue receiving my Yahoo mail. Other email accounts work nicely though.

I wonder if this is Apple's reminder that the Trashcan is getting old...

 

[vett93]

I did a hardware diagnostics by holding the D key while booting the machine up. It showed no issues.

Would you recommend that I downgrade the OS to Mojave?

 

[nobullone1964]

There is a piece of free software called Keep Drive Spinning for Mac that may help you. Google it...it won't kill you to try it.

 

[th0masp]

I did a hardware diagnostics by holding the D key while booting the machine up. It showed no issues.

Would you recommend that I downgrade the OS to Mojave?

If your drives take a week or so to disconnect then I don't think running that hardware diagnostic tool would go 'deep' enough to catch that in case it does turn out to be a hardware issue.

Downgrading OS ... well if you have a working, recent backup to simply switch to then it sounds like an option. But downgrading the main installation manually - uhhh, I think I'd rather live with the USB issue and restart the computer once a week.

 

[vett93]

There is a piece of free software called Keep Drive Spinning for Mac that may help you. Google it...it won't kill you to try it.

I have a USB microphone and a USB webcam connected to a powered USB-hub. They get disconnected too.

I have long running jobs on AWS VMs and my MacPro monitors them. If I reboot my MacPro, these long running jobs crash too.

 

[vett93]

Update: problem solved after upgrading the OS to Big Sur.