USB-3.0 On C6.5 ??

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Just wondering if there are any known issues with USB 3.0 storage devices in CentOS 6.5??

I just got one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817332028

it does either esata or USB 3.0. My new motherboard (ASUS M5A99X EVO
R2.0) supports both, so I’ve tried both (of course, can’t have a feature without at least giving it a whirl! :)). esata seems to work fine, I can copy gigs ‘n gigs of data to it using the esata connection.

however, with USB3 it works for a bit then something goes wonky… After copying some hundreds of megabytes (and I don’t know if it is a consistent number or not) suddenly my C6 box starts reporting write errors.

some investigation shows that /dev/sdc (and /dev/sdc1) no longer exist on the system. it takes a reboot to get it back. After which it’ll work for a while then the same thing all over again. I’ve tried a different USB 3.0 cable but it makes no difference.

Anyone got ideas on this?

thanks!

9 thoughts on - USB-3.0 On C6.5 ??

  • I have that motherboard, but I have not used USB3 on it. I have used USB3 via this card:

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BB7TVMO

    and this one:

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006K25AX4

    On two separate laptops … with no problems with either.

    I would recommend that you have the latest firmware for the motherboard:

    http://bit.ly/1njpc2Y

    The last 2 BIOS updates are for USB … the most recent one less than 2
    weeks ago (Version 2501, 2014.05.14)

    Thanks, Johnny Hughes

  • Thanks, Johnny! After posting I thought to go look for BIOS/firmware updates, and saw that. I’ve downloaded the latest, but haven’t yet installed it. (I’m not excited by having to clear all my settings and then re-do them, but I”ll eventually get around to it.

    Fred

  • Just installed the 2501 BIOS (it had 2201) and the problem still occurs. sigh
    :( :(

    but at least it’s not a show-stopper, the device appears to work fine using esata.

  • I may have to try that, but not quite yet.

    I just ran some more experiments:
    1. using a USB 2.0 cable on a USB 2.0 port. couldn’t make it fail.
    2. using a USB 2.0 cable on a USB 3.0 port. hasn’t failed yet,
    still testing.

    the USB3 functionality comes from a different chip than the USB2:
    03:00.0 USB controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1042 SuperSpeed USB Host Controller whereas USB2 comes from an AMD SB9x chip.

    I’m thinking that it USB2 works, even when managed by a USB3 chipset, should mean something. but I”m not sure if it means that simply slowing it down solves the problem, or if it means that we’re not using all the functionality of the chipset, bypassing something buggy. or maybe bypassing bugs in the ASMedia kernel driver.

  • I didn’t do that, but what I did do was download a nightly build for Fedora 21, a live CD image, burn it to a disc and boot that. One would think it has a recent kernel (I neglected to look while it was running to find out what kernel it was).

    so I ran a bunch of commands to copy stuff to and from it, and while it took a few minutes, it also failed in more or less the same way. I’d guess that means that whatever the bug is, it’s not fixed in Linux, yet.

    :( :( :(

  • So, do you have any other external USB 3 drives laying around to test with?

    It would be good to test if this is a problem with more than just the one external RAID box that you are using.

    How long does this usually take to get the error and what kind of writes access does it take to cause it to fail .. I have 2 of those exact boards in production and a USB3 drive I can plug in and test. I would like to know if this is specific to individual drives or an overall USB3
    problem as I recommend those boards to people now.

    Thanks, Johnny Hughes

  • Johnny:

    I believe that is the only USB3 device here. Did you see my posting a few days ago that said it appears to work as a USB2 device? At least I beat on it for a good while and it didn’t fail, then.

    (yeah, I know… you may recall I asked about good boards and you said you’d had good luck with that one, so in lieu of other suggestions I
    got one. So far it’s been great!)

    What I’ve done to make it fail is find a file (or a tree of directories and files) of several gigabytes and copy it to the device repeatedly until it fails, removing the file from the device between copies. It usually takes only 2-3 such copies to see the failure.

    FYI, the Fedora nightly build live CD (the Mate one) I ran last night also suffered a kernel error right after the USB failure (I suspect they may be related, but don’t know with any certainty) and auto-generated a bugzilla report, if you think it may be interesting, it’s number 1102452
    which has, as I now see, been closed as a duplicate of 1096572..

    Fred

  • Johnny, check out this bug: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id96572
    where comment #10 reports that someone upstream has been working on this bug and is thought to have a fix.

    If that is in fact the cause of my problem, one could wish that it would eventually get backported into EL6 and ultimiately CentOS….