Windows 7: USB 3.0 Compatability

Hi, I am having a strange problem with my USB portable hard drives. I have thre portables 2 seagates and 1 WD Essentials. Individually all of them are recognized and the transfer speed is pretty decent. My probem occurs is when I try to use two of them at the same time, one will load and display the other will not display and eventually removes itself. I have a P6X58D-E mother board which has two USB 3.0 ports on the back of my PC. My controller is Renesas Electronics USB 3.0.

I must also add I can use any of my three above portable drives and a usb stick 3.0 stick with no problem at all, the the problem seems to be only with my system not allowing me to have two portable drives running at the same time.

I can also run a portable usb 3 direct from its port whilst plugging the other two into usb 2.0 ports, again no problem all drives show.

My Renesas Electronics USB 3.0 Host Controller driver version is 2.1.39.0 and my firmware version is 3034

Greatly appreciate any help to solve this most annoying problem.

Hi nIxIe,

Technically, your motherboard has two USB controllers the Renesas/NEC® USB 3.0 controller (2 x USB 3.0 ports) and the Intel® ICH10R controller (8 x USB 2.0 ports). It is possible that the USB 3.0 controller is unable to handle the power demand of those 2 external hard drives to simultaneously work at the same time. Thus, plugging those portable HDDs to the USB 2.0 controller doesn't have problems since the controller handles 8 USB 2.0 ports and is able to manage the power demand of those 2 external drives to work at the same time.

Thanx I must admit that had not even crossed my mind, is there any sort of work around to this power issue ?

buy yourself a powered usb 3.0 hub and attach it to a usb 3.0 port, and or buy a usb 3.0 pci card :)

and or sertle for usb 2.0 speeds!!

A USB PCI-e card is a good shout, you can pick a Renesas one up for about fourteen quid, maybe less. That'll give you two extra ports at the back powered separately. Alernatively you could pick up one of these if you have a midboard header not in use. I have one in my backup rig and it's great.

Thanx for the great tips Guys, looks like I am in business. This thread can be closed.