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

[castellar]

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

Hi
I'm getting the "USB 3.0 This device can perform faster. This USB Mass Storage Device can transfer information faster if you connect it to a Super-Speed USB 3.0 port" message even though the external disk is connected to a USB 3.0 port with a USB 3.0 cable.
Any hints?
Thanks

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[Phone Man]

Try a different port or cable. A USB port has different pins for USB 3 and USB 2, so if there is a problem on the connection for USB 3 it will try the USB 2 circuit. Could also be a driver problem.

Jim

 

[maxie]

Hi there .. For some reason this can happen with Windows 7 .. Best advice i think is just ignore it ...

 

[ComputerGeek]

USB 3.0 computer ports are blue. USB 3.0 cables are either marked blue OR have initials SS on the female connector end of the 3.0 cable. Make sure your connection is right. (And, of course) it's a 3.0 device, i assume.

Connect directly to the computer. Not through a hub

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Some MOBOs have one USB 3.0 port that is faster than the others; I ran into that with my new notebook. It has two USB 3.0 ports. One will give me the message saying that the other would be faster (which it was when I tested them).

Other MOBOs use a USB 3.0 booster of some sort that is tied to specific devices.

 

[castellar]

Thank you all for your helpful replies. The two 3.0 ports tried are definitely 3.0 and cable and external drive are 3.0 too. The speed I am getting on backups is between 3 and 400 Mb/s.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

All a device needs to do to be able to claim it's USB 3.0 is be a bit faster than USB 2.0's upper limit.

 

[ComputerGeek]

Every USB controller has a root hub. Each root hub has one or more ports.(The controller + root hub + root hub ports are all on the motherboard). Root hub ports are NOT the same as the computer ports you see on your machine and what you plug your device into.

(In general), when you plug a USB device into the computer port, Windows + firmware dynamically decide which controller/root hub/root hub port it connects to. Bad (wrong) decisions can occur for different reasons.

@castellar
You should verify what your 3.0 device is actually being to connected to on the motherboard. Download USBTreeView. Unzip and run either the 32 or 64 bit version depending on if you're running 32 or 64 bit Windows. In TreeView, root hub ports are indicated with an H ( for a hi-speed hub port) or (S super-speed hubport).

Post a snapshot of the left side of the display (the visual "tree view") to show us what it's being connected to.

@LadyFitzgerald
You may find this a curious exercise as well. Use USBTreeView to see what type of hub ports your 3.0 device connects from each of your 2 computer ports.

 

[madcratebuilder]

Thank you all for your helpful replies. The two 3.0 ports tried are definitely 3.0 and cable and external drive are 3.0 too. The speed I am getting on backups is between 3 and 400 Mb/s.

If you are certain you have a USB cable then I would suspect it's the driver. Your device is rated for USB 3 SS (super speed) That why you get the message about faster speed. It's incorrect cable, port or driver.

 

[castellar]

@ComputerGeek, thank you! I rebooted first and, lo and behold, no longer got the warning. I attach the screenshot which now seems to show all is correct. This seems reasonable if the USB port can be reassigned dynamically. If I transfer a large file, I'm getting speeds of about 110-120 Mb/s. Is that a normal value?

 

[Phone Man]

Your speed looks normal for USB 3, at least that is what I get on my USB 3 WD external disc. I also have a USB 2 Seagate and it gets about a 1/3 of that.

Jim

 

[castellar]

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

 

[Icarus]

I am having the exact same issues.
It started with a Vantec dock that they said was faulty so I returned it. I then bought a Syba SY-ENC35026 and it is doing the same. Using WD Black 1TB drives. I tried it with two motherboards but got the same result. USBTreeView shows it only running at high speed.
Any help would be great as I am only getting 40-45MB/second.

 

[JeffroHIo]

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.

 

[naushikaa]

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!

 

[Barman58]

Is your external drive USB3 compatible - if not fully supported it will default back to USB2

 

[naushikaa]

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.

 

[cfbosch]

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.

 

[apb]

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.

 

[cfbosch]

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.