"USB 3.0 This device can perform faster" message even though connected

@Phone Man, thanks. That's put my mind at ease.

I just wanted to chime into this old post because of something I did to fix the issue I had with my USB 3.0 dock connected to a USB 3.0 hub. It was stating the "this device can perform faster ...".

After checking the cable and hub, I remembered something else that happened after transitioning to USB 3.0. If the cable isn't connected or pushed all the way in, it's possible that the 2.0 connections will connect, but the necessary 3.0 connections will not. So once I pushed in (make sure you power off the device/hub first) the cable all the way in to the hub, I was back to USB 3.0 speeds.

Hi,
I know it's an old thread, but this is the exact problem I'm having and the suggestions haven't solved the issue yet.

So I looked at the USB device tree viewer, and my USB3 external HDD connects to the same USB2 hub no matter where I plug it in. I have 2x blue USB3 and 1 USB2 physical ports on the outside of my laptop.

Here's a screenshot.

The 3rd controller seems like it's the USB3. The 1st 2 not. My ex HDD is highlighted. How can I force it to use USB3? I already tried uninstalling driver and reconnecting.
Thanks for any help in advance!

Yeh, it is- says "USB 3.0 interface" on the box. The USB 3 cable came with it in the box too. HGST Touro S 1TB.

I have a similar problem, not exactly the same, but similar. I'm hoping you guys have suggestions, because the other results for searching around for solutions to this problem on the net result in advice from 2012, the days where USB 3.0 was still a rather new thing. If there truly is nothing we can do about it, then I also hope my views allow other readers to put the problem in the "can't do anything about it, accept it" basket.

I can get USB 3.0 speeds out of this disk, Seagate Expansion 2 TB 2.5" sometimes. However, very often, I get the old Windows "This device can perform faster if you plug it into a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port" warning. When that happens, UsbTreeView reports that the device is only running at H, not SS, and I'm back in the USB 2.0 era.

My solution is to plug the connector out of the drive, and plug it back in. Sometimes things go well, and I get SS connectivity and I can transfer at 50 to 60 MB/s (i'm not going to convert that to megabit per second, this is the speed Windows and FreeFileSync reports, and the speed I calculate when I do the filesize / time to copy calculation) - this I deem to be USB 3.0 speed.

I have more success angling the connector slightly when I plug it back in, almost as if I force different pins to make contact first, or possibly lowers the resistance of the connection at the time. The drive side us a USB 3.0 micro connector.

Also, often, when I reboot, the drive detects as H again. The only solution is to plug it again. The plug is wearing out as a result.

When it works fine, and rebooting causes the connection to downgrade, implicates drivers, firmware and software. I believe that is part of the issue. But powering up the drive also comes into play, maybe if the connection is assisted by manipulation when you plug the drive it goes SS, where if it is left alone, it has enough power to keep spinning, but the connection unassisted by manipulation has too high resistance to allow enough power through to spin up the device on a reboot.

My thoughts are it's a hardware problem, I propose 3 postulations:

• The connector does not reliably connect all the pins with low enough resistance to power up and detect as SS.
• The USB 3.0 micro jack on the drive got bent one too many times and a track on the PCB of the drive developed a dry contact.
• The contacts degraded from too much movement on the connector.

To me, it boils down to the connection, and I feel the design of the USB 3.0 micro connector is the culprit. It's too fragile.

Lets hope USB C in future hardware improves our situation.

I had a similar problem with an expresscard USB 3.0. The card supplier explained that the speed is limited by the speed of the bus that the hub is connected to. If the bus speed cannot support full USB 3.0 speeds, the hub will operate at the highest speed it supports, faster than USB 2.0, but the OS will still tell you it is not full speed. In fact I was getting speeds higher than 2.0, but not full 3.0.

There also seem to be issues with the negotiation. Probably the USB 3.0 standard has ambiguities, and may not be easy to translate into Chinese, so subtle timing issues might result in fallback.

Just a follow up - I found a cable that reliably connects as SS. I had several other cables, and they let me down. Maybe fish around for cables to have lots of options to test with.