ASUS G74SX USB 3.0 Issues

[Retired]

I've been having problems with my Rocketfish USB 3.0 2.5' enclosure. When plugged into the USB 3 port of the G74SX after very little usage (especially during a HDTune test) it disconnects and reconnects rendering any transfer impossible (beyond a few hundred megabytes). Anyone experience this issue? It works fine in a USB 2.0 port and the USB 3 port works fine with a 3.0 flash drive. I tested the drive on my desktop which also has USB 3.0 and it worked just fine. I'm guessing the port isn't supplying sufficient power for the drive which is strange. I also tried plugging the 2nd USB connector into the USB 2.0 port to give it some extra juice but it changed nothing. The drive I am using is one of the 750GB 7200RPM drives from the G74 (I replaced one of the internals with an M4 SSD). Thanks so much for your help.

[JRd1st]

All you had to do was reinstall that program?

[Muzz]

in this case, yes. As I mentioned earlier, the Cickfree and WD drives I tried would not work properly no matter what fixes I tried. It may not have anything to do with the issue but I'm wondering that since the laptop drives are Seagate as well that there's less conflict.

[BrodyBoy]

Muzz wrote:
in this case, yes. As I mentioned earlier, the Cickfree and WD drives I tried would not work properly no matter what fixes I tried. It may not have anything to do with the issue but I'm wondering that since the laptop drives are Seagate as well that there's less conflict.

I don't believe the internal drives effect this in any way. They're on a completely different interface. I use three different WD external drives, and they all seem to work okay. (I've used them on a G74 that had Seagate HHDs, and two that had WD HHDs.)

There are couple known vulnerabilities with external 3.0 drives....maybe you were running into one of them. (1) Their cabling is very picky and can fail easily. Many people have found that just using a different (and often, shorter) cable resolves their issue. (2) Chastity claims that manufacturers push the limits of the USB power spec, and that some drives require more juice, particularly at spin-up, than the port can supply. It seems weird that this would be unit-specific, rather than model-specific, but I defer to her expertise.

[LarsM]

BrodyBoy wrote:
I don't believe the internal drives effect this in any way. They're on a completely different interface. I use three different WD external drives, and they all seem to work okay. (I've used them on a G74 that had Seagate HHDs, and two that had WD HHDs.)

There are couple known vulnerabilities with external 3.0 drives....maybe you were running into one of them. (1) Their cabling is very picky and can fail easily. Many people have found that just using a different (and often, shorter) cable resolves their issue. (2) Chastity claims that manufacturers push the limits of the USB power spec, and that some drives require more juice, particularly at spin-up, than the port can supply. It seems weird that this would be unit-specific, rather than model-specific, but I defer to her expertise.

Hi Brodyboy.
I address you, since you have the black belt 🙂
I have the same problems with my g53sx, and i assume it doesn't matter if it's 53 or 74. Just got it 2 weeks ago and encountered the problem right away because I had my Passport as backup device with my old pc and tried to copy files to my new g53sx. It was OS win XP whitout usb3.0, but I don't think that matter.
My WD passport 3.0 1 tb connect/disconnect repeatedly for a while, until my g53sx desides there is nothing there. It doesn't matter if i'm copying files or not. (Usb2.0 works fine, just like others here report.)
Asus Tech-support wanted me to test with other 3.0 devices, but I cannot afford that. And I can't borrow any. My wiew is that this should work on a high-end pc whitout problems like this. But I cant decide if I should reclaim my money and send it back, because it is the best pc i've had. And I've had several the last 18 years.
Is it possible to sum up what I should do to try to repair the usb3.0 issue, so it works with my WD Passport?

You have talked about uninstalling the drivers, and auto-reinstall them. And adjusting the power to the usb-port.
What would your advice be today?
And how do I do this? Thank you for your answer.

Best regards
LarsM

[BrodyBoy]

LarsM wrote:
Is it possible to sum up what I should do to try to repair the usb3.0 issue, so it works with my WD Passport?

You have talked about uninstalling the drivers, and auto-reinstall them. And adjusting the power to the usb-port.
What would your advice be today?
And how do I do this? Thank you for your answer.

Best regards
LarsM

Hi Lars, welcome to the forum. 🙂

I'm sorry you're having this issue that has plagued so many G-series owners. Unfortunately, I don't know of a sure-fire fix. I still think it seems like a power issue....for some reason, it seems like the port is detected as idle, so the computer puts it into a power-saving mode. I could be completely wrong, of course, but that's what the behavior sounds like to me.

I can only sugest you try the steps already discussed:
(1) Download the latest USB driver (there's new one I haven't tried....it's worth a shot! 3.5.24.0)
(2) Uninstall the current USB 3.0 driver
(3) Uninstall the all USB devices in Device Manager
(4) Turn off the USB power-saving options in Windows Power Management (or P4G, if you're using that)
(5) Reboot, and let WIndows re-install all the standard USB devices
(6) Install the new USB 3.0 driver

Beyond that, the only thing I can tell you is that I've never had this issue on my G-series that runs a clean installation. I think others have tried resolving this problem with clean installations, but I don't know what all they installed (there are different interpretations of "clean"....;)), so I can't really conclude whether that is the difference in my configuration.

PS: If you can, be sure to try the "low-tech" troubleshooting option.....use a different USB 3.0 cable. Prefereably, a really short one.

[LarsM]

BrodyBoy wrote:
Hi Lars, welcome to the forum. 🙂

I'm sorry you're having this issue that has plagued so many G-series owners. Unfortunately, I don't know of a sure-fire fix. I still think it seems like a power issue....for some reason, it seems like the port is detected as idle, so the computer puts it into a power-saving mode. I could be completely wrong, of course, but that's what the behavior sounds like to me.

I can only sugest you try the steps already discussed:
(1) Download the latest USB driver (there's new one I haven't tried....it's worth a shot! 3.5.24.0)
(2) Uninstall the current USB 3.0 driver
(3) Uninstall the all USB devices in Device Manager
(4) Turn off the USB power-saving options in Windows Power Management (or P4G, if you're using that)
(5) Reboot, and let WIndows re-install all the standard USB devices
(6) Install the new USB 3.0 driver

Beyond that, the only thing I can tell you is that I've never had this issue on my G-series that runs a clean installation. I think others have tried resolving this problem with clean installations, but I don't know what all they installed (there are different interpretations of "clean"....;)), so I can't really conclude whether that is the difference in my configuration.

PS: If you can, be sure to try the "low-tech" troubleshooting option.....use a different USB 3.0 cable. Prefereably, a really short one.

Hi Brody, and thanks a lot:)
I didn't adjust any power, but I followed step 1 - 6 above.
I also uninstalled the WD-smartware, just incase.

AND IT WORKED!

When I installed the driver from the link above, I also runned a program file called Asus-patch something... It followed in the downloaded zip-file with the driver-file. I don't know if it was crucial to fix the problem but it seems to work now.
I have done security copying to my WD Passport, and transfer of large files from the Passport to the Notebook. 6 Gb in about a minute. During the file transfer it said the transfer speed was 45 - 60 MB/sec.
Is this the corect speed for the usb3.0?

Thank you for your help. This was fantastic 🙂
Lars

[Arx7neo]

BrodyBoy wrote:
Hi Lars, welcome to the forum. 🙂

I'm sorry you're having this issue that has plagued so many G-series owners. Unfortunately, I don't know of a sure-fire fix. I still think it seems like a power issue....for some reason, it seems like the port is detected as idle, so the computer puts it into a power-saving mode. I could be completely wrong, of course, but that's what the behavior sounds like to me.

I can only sugest you try the steps already discussed:
(1) Download the latest USB driver (there's new one I haven't tried....it's worth a shot! 3.5.24.0)
(2) Uninstall the current USB 3.0 driver
(3) Uninstall the all USB devices in Device Manager
(4) Turn off the USB power-saving options in Windows Power Management (or P4G, if you're using that)
(5) Reboot, and let WIndows re-install all the standard USB devices
(6) Install the new USB 3.0 driver

Beyond that, the only thing I can tell you is that I've never had this issue on my G-series that runs a clean installation. I think others have tried resolving this problem with clean installations, but I don't know what all they installed (there are different interpretations of "clean"....;)), so I can't really conclude whether that is the difference in my configuration.

PS: If you can, be sure to try the "low-tech" troubleshooting option.....use a different USB 3.0 cable. Prefereably, a really short one.

Thank you so much for this solution. You don't know how much trouble I had in that particular problem. I almost tried everything in those 5 months and still the same prob. I even have my G74 replaced with a new board XD. Hands down.

[kimiraikkonen]

Arx7neo wrote:
Thank you so much for this solution. You don't know how much trouble I had in that particular problem. I almost tried everything in those 5 months and still the same prob. I even have my G74 replaced with a new board XD. Hands down.

What was your solution so?

[LoneWolf3574]

Has anybody actually resolved this issue? I've tried downloading and installing drivers from ASUS, a couple of links posted here (3.5.24.0) and one that I found (3.5.97.0). The only thing I've managed to do is reduce the apparent "epileptic" seizure of disconnect/reconnects it seemed to have to once every few minutes. Even then, it's not always successful at coming back immediately.

[JRd1st]

Muzz wrote:
in this case, yes. As I mentioned earlier, the Cickfree and WD drives I tried would not work properly no matter what fixes I tried. It may not have anything to do with the issue but I'm wondering that since the laptop drives are Seagate as well that there's less conflict.

I think the Seagate drives just have a better interface. I read a thread a few weeks ago, where someone found that only Seagate drives worked in the usb 3 port. It seems that some HDD manufacturers are too dependant of the fact that many companies are installing usb 3 interfaces that supply more bus current than the spec amount. Perhaps seagate is designing theirs to spec. :shrug: