USB 3 Running at High-Speed (I'm Going Insane!)

gohan2091 · 23 Jul 2015

I have an Asrock Z68 Extreme4 motherboard that has 2 USB 3.0 ports at the rear. My external WD My Book 4TB USB 3.0 Hard drive will not operate at USB 3.0 speeds no matter what I do. Using USB Device Tree Viewer (which actually shows I have 8 USB 3.0 ports....hmmm), it always shows my external HD as "high-speed" using USB Version 2.10 and not "SuperSpeed" using USB version 3.00. I have a 32GB USB memory stick which inside USB Device Tree Viewer, shows it as "SuperSpeed" most of the time but frustratingly, sometimes this will only show as "high-speed" when plugged into either one of the two USB 3.0 ports. Sometimes I have to reboot my computer for my memory stick to operate at USB 3 speeds. As I said, I can never get my external HD to operate at SuperSpeed. This leads me to believe that it's not the fault of my external HD but something else.

I have installed Etron EJ168 USB 3.0 Host Controller drivers 0.115 and now 0.118 hoping it solves my problem. I have also disabled legacy USB 3.0 support in the UEFI (BIOS) and set legacy USB support to UEFI only. Power saving features of the USB ports are off too. Nothing is working, any ideas? I have attached two pictures to this thread for you to look at:

GokAy · 23 Jul 2015

Possibly 2 x 4 ports, 4 for each of the 2 rear physical ports.

Do you get the "This device can perform faster" warning pop up when speeds are stuck at USB 2.0?

essenbe · 23 Jul 2015

I wouldn't recommend disabling Legacy. It allows you to use either USB 3.0 or USB 2.0 devices.

Boozad · 24 Jul 2015

I'm pretty sure Legacy USB enables support at boot for use in BIOS, the best mode I've found for that is AUTO. If legacy devices are connected they will be enabled, if not the feature is bypassed. I played around with that a lot trying to get rid of my strange unremovable device showing in Disk Managament, and if I remember correctly disabling it didn't affect me. I could be wrong there though, I'll have to try and dig out the old thread.

It would also help if the OP stated what speeds his devices are actually transferring at, USB 3.0 guarantees nothing other than it is faster than USB 2.0. Speeds will vary depending upon each device.

gohan2091 · 25 Jul 2015

GokAy said:

Possibly 2 x 4 ports, 4 for each of the 2 rear physical ports.

Do you get the "This device can perform faster" warning pop up when speeds are stuck at USB 2.0?

No, I don't ever get that pop-up message but the USB Device Tree Viewer tells me whether the device is connected at high-speed or SuperSpeed.

Boozad said:

It would also help if the OP stated what speeds his devices are actually transferring at, USB 3.0 guarantees nothing other than it is faster than USB 2.0. Speeds will vary depending upon each device.

I've messed around with legacy USB options, nothing is helping to be honest. The speeds I am getting is irrelevant in my opinion because USB Device Tree Viewer tells me when the USB 3.0 port is connecting to the attached device at High-Speed or SuperSpeed. We know High-Speed is USB 2 and SuperSpeed is USB 3. It's worth mentioning that my WD external HD is a USB 3.0 device and has a USB 3.0 cable (indicated by the blue plastic inside the USB ends and an SS label)

Boozad · 25 Jul 2015

The speed you're getting is relevant though, I have four USB 3.0 Kingston Data Travellers that only transfer at 10Mb/s (at best) even they show up as super speed whereas my Hitachi Touro Mobile USB 3.0 external HDD transfers at over 100Mb/s consistently. USB 2.0 drives at work transfer faster than my Data Travellers.

GokAy · 25 Jul 2015

My 1TB WD Passport (USB 3.0) tops at 60MB/s.

Boozad · 25 Jul 2015

That's my point, some devices will transfer at super speed whereas others are bordering on being sold under false pretenses.

**Pauly** · 25 Jul 2015

TBH I think its something you may have to live with, unfortunately your equipment predates USB 3 chipset support (I have similar problems to you) so manufacturers added 3rd party chips to their motherboards as a stop gap.
Im not sure of the exact point when USB3 was truly integrated but it was around Ivybridge chips but most if not all Z68/H61 etc chipsets suffer with these problems.
It improves slightly with B75/Z77 era equipment but I don't believe it was truly sorted until Haswell chipsets, coupled with the fact that win7 doesn't have native USB3 support it can be an issue, although Win 8 does have native support I have never really used it so not sure if that works better with the older chipsets ??

I have tried numerous setups/variations/driver reinstalls etc on H61/B75/H77/Z77 motherboards and have never truly got them to work 100% correctly 100% of the time
I have a few Toshiba USB 3 backup drives that have an activity LED that lights white for USB2 and blue for USB3 and it still seems pot luck at which speed it connects at, my home machine goes blue 90% of the time and my transfer speeds are reasonably good so I have left it alone for a while now but it still occasionally goes white and nearly always connects at USB2 at the office (H77). I have just accepted this now and will live with it until I go to newer hardware

essenbe · 25 Jul 2015

As Pauly alluded to, no matter what connection you use, it will always be limited by the write speed of what you are transferring to. No matter how fast your connection is able to transfer data, you can't transfer it faster than the device you are connect can write. There are other factors involved too, but that is the primary one.