How do you confirm USB3 is operational

G'Day All,
I have an fairly new ASUS laptop that has a USB 3 port onboard. In preparation for buying a WD passport USB 3 drive I decided to downloaded the latest USB 3 driver from the ASUS website. When I tried to install it the installation ceased and gave an error code.

I rang ASUS tech support, they gave me a link to another driver which I downloaded and the same problem occurred. After many follow up calls I came to the conclusion they were of no help at all, especially when they finally suggested formatting the hard drive and doing a fresh installation, which I wasn't prepared to do seeing everything else seemed to be humming along okay!

Okay so what's the problem I hear you ask:
Seeing this driver wouldn't install correctly, could the original USB3 driver have been corrupted, because when I connected my WD passport drive, I'm not convinced it's operating as a USB3 device and with my limited knowledge I have no way of telling if it is.

I've checked the BIOS and the only option for USB3 is to change from 2 switching modes, which I don't want to fiddle with yet until I hopefully hear from someone with some suggestions.

When I checked under the USB Heading in Device Manager there are USB 3 options listed along with a Composite driver. On checking the Drives heading in Device Manager for the WD passport drive, the driver shows the date of 2006 which is the same date as that used for the Composite USB.

This didn't seem right to me so I tried to do a driver update from both the software that came with the WD passport drive, and from the net. Windows reports the latest driver is already installed installed.

I found a thread here about USB3 ports not working, (USB 3.0 Ports Not Working) But I'm not sure whether this is relevant to me as I my USB listings don't show any errors with the drivers, I just don't seem to be able to access the USB 3 setting.

Hoping somone is able to help. Cheers Ron

Golden said:

Hi Ron,

This is an area I am also interested in pursuing ie. how much faster is USB3.0 v USB2.0. My understanding is it has to be enabled in the BIOS for some motheboards. Anyway....

This is perhaps a crude method, but should give you a definitive answer:

1. Copy a file of known size (preferbaly a large file) onto a classic USB2.0 device.
2. Copy the same file to your new USB3.0 device

and then compare the time it takes to do that.

Regards,
Golden

My friend was just over and he brought his external 700gb 3.0 USB and its a ton faster i copped a 902MB file in about 15 seconds.

Doing just that is what made me think I wasn't being connected as a USB3 device.

I saved a 3Gb folder from the laptop to the WD passport and it took 2+minutes to save. I then copied the same folder from the passport drive to my desktop computer via a USB2 port and it took just over 2 minutes.

Any comments guys on how to verify this please

Thanks for the reply Jim.
Checked the device manager, in the list there are 2 Generic Root Hubs and 2 Universal Root hubs, none of them seem to be associated with the WD passport HDD, and all indicate they are running at high speed. So as I guessed the drive isn't operating at the right speed

As the drive is packaged as a USB3 drive from Western Digital, I'm assuming the lead they supplied is correct for this purpose. A wrong assumption do you think?

Any clues as to how to get the drive to connect as a USB3?

One thing to consider is that just because a device is USB 3 compatible that doesn't necessarily mean it will run at the full USB 3 speed. A lot of them don't even come close to USB 2 speed. You need to read the fine print. If you compare your two external hard drives you may find that one is basically a laptop drive that runs at 5400 RPM and the other is a desktop drive that runs at 7200 RPM. Those thin small external drives usually have a 2.5 inch form factor drive inside and the larger ones a 3.5 inch drive. In any case if the drive inside the case is a mechanical drive with platters you'll never get close to USB 3 speeds from it.

Thanks for your comments guys, but I'm beginning to think that there's no easy way to determine the drive is connecting to the laptop as a USB 3 device.

Does anyone know of a checklist procedure to be able to verify this.

The cable is USB 3 compliant, according to WD, so that's one step I can cross off but the others?