Maxtor 300gb external USB drive hangs

[Gertjan Vinkesteijn]

Keith Lofstrom wrote:

>Lasse K. Christiansen <lasse at christiansens.net> writes about a problem
>with his Maxtor 300GB USB2 drive:
>
>  
>
>>The problems is that it mounts just fine and works for a brief period of time 
>>(not sure that it uses USB2 driver on my machine though) and in the middle of 
>>copying files it stops working and tells me that it cannot copy files. 
>>Invalid Block device and i cannot unmount it.
>>
>>Only solution that i've found is a reboot ! and then it works for a couple of 
>>minutes again.
>>    
>>
> ...
>  
>
>>Have anyone seen anything similar ?? I've encountered this issue with all 
>>kernel for Fedora core 1 that i've tried. When booting knoppix and trying to 
>>copy files it just works ??
>>    
>>
>
>Keith Lofstrom replies:
>
>I see the very same thing, on Redhat 9 and on Fedora Core 1.  You do not
>need to reboot;  rmmod'ing and insmod'ing the usb drivers, then plugging
>and unplugging the USB,  will probably make your drive come back.  
>
>In my case, this occurs with a Sanmax InClose USB2-to-ATA6 swap cage. 
>This uses the Cypress chipset.  I do NOT see the same problem with the
>similar but slower ViPower swap cage.  While I don't know the details
>of implementation, I strongly suspect a bug in the USB2 driver.  I am
>lazy, however.   Rather than track this down, submit a bug to bugzilla,
>and watch nothing happen, I thought I would wait to see if the problem
>is fixed in Fedora Core 2 before raising a fuss.  Wrong move.  Sorry.
>
>The Cypress chipset in the Sanmax has larger FIFOs, and runs twice as
>fast as the Vipower cage does.  However, throttling down the transfer
>rate with a program with built-in delays does not help.  The system
>goes for an *average* of 40GB before hanging, and producing the error
>messages you mention.  However, it seems purely random, and sometimes
>it can move 80GB without a problem, and sometimes it hangs after 1GB.
>
>Engineer Jack Mich at Sanmax did some tests on their product under
>Windows.  No problems observed.  He says they are using the Cypress
>recommended code in their product.  This, and the fact that the
>rmmod/insmod trick works, also points at a driver bug.
>
>For more details, see http://www.keithl.com/usb2bug.html .
>
>I have other ways of accessing my big drives;  obviously, you do not
>have that luxury.  I am not much of a programmer, but I can compile
>a kernel, and have a spare machine to run the tests on.  If there are
>any experiments I can run to help isolate the bug, I can try to fit
>them into my schedule.  I can also loan (via FedEx to a US address)
>both a Sanmax and a ViPower swap cage to anyone who can convince me
>they are ABLE and MOTIVATED to fix this bug (I'll want them back).
>A usb2 card and a >=40GB test hard drive would be needed, of course.
>
>Lasse, forgive my complacency in not reporting this earlier; it might
>have saved you from purchasing an expensive hard drive you will not be
>able to immediately use.  That said, it should be possible to locate the
>problem in the usb code and patch it, given a sufficiently talented and
>persistent programmer, and there might be one or two of those around here.  
>
>Keith
>
>  
>
With all the chiptalk etc. My 120Gbyte Maxtor drives extremly good. I am 
very very careful with the USB intake though, thus with 5 usb 
connecttors, the drive is on the inside one...

If your drive is mounted and you do a fsck or fs2ch, that can result in 
disaster, somewhow it is still flakey, th book tells that it is a 
usb->scsi emulation, that might be the cause of troubles mentioned above.

-- 
Peace is everywhere
http://gershwin.xs4all.nl