Transend USB 3.0 PCI Card

[ian986]

I purchased one of these card from the internet I have never done any upgrades apart from putting extra ram in so to say I am a novice is a understatment!

So I put the card in but it need extra power there was warning all over the card saying about make sure power is connected the right way around otherwise will blow the card. The connecter could only go in one way as was shaped so connected it! Tried to disconnect but was stuck in there

The card is not working If you go to the devices you can see it there but dont know if that is because I have loaded the drivers

I also bought WD Passport with usb 3.0 which worked fine on my girlfriends computer tried to connect to my new card which did not work! so went back to girllfriends computer and the drive dont work in that now

Any advice would be much appreiciated

 

[DocBrown]

Did you load the drivers first or install the card first ? Correct small PCI-E slot ?

 

[ian986]

Did you load the drivers first or install the card first ? Correct small PCI-E slot ?

Thanks for fast reply!

I did install cards first then drivers card is a small slot pci express

 

[Ponmayilal]

If in the Device Manager the USB3 Host controllers are seen, it would mean that your card has been detected and the drivers have been installed. ( I presume it is the NEC UPD720200 chip.If you have installed the latest drivers it should show as Renesas USB3 Host controller otherwise NEC USB3 Host Controller. This part of the NEC business has been taken over by Renesas)

Another way to double check is to run the USB3 Host Controller Utility in which you can check or uncheck the power management function. The controller should be listed there.

Just plug in a USB2 pendrive into the USB3 port of the card and see whether it is read.(USB3 is backward-compatible). Back up all data on the pendrive before trying this.

 

[ian986]

The connector I used for power is like this white one in the picture Does this look right ?

 

[Ponmayilal]

If it was the one supplied with your card and if you had mated them correctly with their counterparts that should be OK. They are of course keyed at both the sata end and molex end. So I fail to undersatand what you mean by saying you are stuck. Anyway keep aside this problem and check the functioning with a USB pendrive into the USB3 port.

 

[ian986]

The pen drive dont work I tried plugging in my I phone cable and did not reconise it it either

Here are some shot I took with snipping tool maybe might mean some thing to you guys

 

[Ponmayilal]

To me it appears that the driver might not have installed correctly.

In the USB3 controller information you had posted, I do not find " Disable USB 3.0 power management functions" which one can check or uncheck, as I had indicated in my previous post. Then what does that utility do?



(Well, I would have posted this screenshot in my previous post itself but at that time and to my chagrin, I found the Host Controller missing from my Device Manager. Just a day back then, I had plugged in my wireless adapter into the USB3 port and it was working fine.

I just now completed the exercise of uninstalling the driver, pulling out and reinstalling the card. On booting, the card was recognised and asked for the driver. I utilised this opportunity to install the latest driver. This is the second time it has happened and I know not why it is happening. I now believe that this NEC/Renesas Controller and the drivers are flaky)

So now, uninstall the driver (Control Panel>Programs and Features) and reinstall the latest driver. Hopefully your problem may get resolved.

Download the latest driver Gigabyte, ASUS NEC/RENESAS USB 3.0 Controller Driver 2.0.32.0 WHQL Available - Free device drivers Download

Good luck.

 

[ian986]

Ponmayilal Thanks for your help I did what you said and it did not work I think it must be a faulty card or I have powered it up wrong as I left pen drive in car so I plugged in my I pod and that has died now !! I will have to try and get some one to have a look at what I done (Hardware) Will I be ok to leave those drivers that I downloaded ? One other thing I am running 64 bit Windows 7 Does that matter?

Thanks again for all your help and When I find out what I did wrong I will let you know

 

[Ponmayilal]

Sorry to learn that you lost your Ipod.

You may uninstall the driver after you remove the faulty card. When you install a new replacement card, after Windows boots, it will ask for the driver. You may then install the driver.

( I am still wondering how it could have damaged your WD drive and Ipod. Usually all designs adopt a "failsafe" philosophy. Only "catastrophic" damages can pass it to connected devices. Well, I am not gonna lecture on it. )

We will be eager to know what exactly the cause was.

 

[ian986]

The plot thickens!! I got a friend to check that I had installed the card correctly and I had !! So i will send it back and get my money back.
I went o a pc shop today and bought a graphics card HIS radeon HD 5450 and the aero performance has gone down from 4.3 to 4.1 but the 3d graphics has gone up by 1.0
Also bought a different make USB 3.0 card at same time they watched me install it in the shop so I did right get home and not working computer does not reconise the card is in.

I am begining to think me and computers dont go well together I ordered some extra memory online and guess what computer wont take it work fine if take out other sticks of memory I think is because one is 667 another 5300 and the last two where 6400 which is a pain as I did the crucial scan thing and thats what came up!!

Maybe I should have stuck with my ZX81 no problems there LOL

 

[ian986]

Cant get USB 3.0 card to work the the shop has had some problems with them so I got a refund on that !
How difficult can this be so? I am going to order a gigabyte one of the net now fingers crossed that works ok!

 

[ian986]

I have finally got it to work, It has taken 3 different USB 3.0 Cards! I wish I had got the gigabyte one from the start it was a case of plug and play I have only been brave enough to put a pen drive in there at the moment so cant say what transfer speed is yet,but I will up date when I have tried this.

What I have learnt from this is if you want to add a USB 3.0 card get a Gigabyte one !

 

[Ponmayilal]

There may be something true in what you have stated.

My experience with the SYBA 2 port USB3 PCIe Card has been frustrating. Perhaps thats the one thing that had stumped me the most todate - as far as hardware is concerned.

I had seen the USB3 controller mysteriousy disappearing from the Device Manager only to reappear after the card is plugged out and replugged. This happened atleast thrice and I had to go through the exercise of opening the case.

Was it the card or the NEC 720200 driver or Windows 7 detecting the hardware on and off? To this day there is no clarity.

Next, while the pendrives get detected easily and stay put, the Seagate FreeAgent Go/GoFlex drives - USB 2 - will only play hide and seek. Sometimes they wouldn't get detected at all. I thought may be if I used a USB3 device, it wouldn't happen.That wasn't. When I plugged in my newly acquired Seagate GoFlex Ultraportable 1.5TB HDD with the proper USB3 cable/adapter, the same hide and seek game continued.

The only thing I could do now is to feed the power to the card from a different molex connector coming from the power supply. There was absolutely no rationale in doing it. It was only a desperate attempt to do what else one can possibly do and try one's luck with a prayer on the lips . Touchwood - the problem seems to have resolved and now all my drives are recognised and stay put. Well - for how long? I am keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best.

I was even contemplating buying a Transcend USB 3 card which is available here itself - I bought the SYBA Card from ebay, USA - but after reading your post have given up any such thoughts. Thank you.

 

[ian986]

The transend card I have no idea what the drivers are for that, The 2nd card Novatech) Novatech USB 3.0 PCIe Controller Card 2 Port
I think the novatech card had nec drivers I called up the company and they have had a few problems with these cards and drivers.

The gigabyte card was so easy card got reconised staright away even with me forgeting to plug the power into the card The only thing I did different I used another power cable! As you know from my first post I am no computer expert, Just my advice the gigbyte card seems to work as it should where the other cards failed!

 

[ian986]

I took this snip earlier today uplaoding I tunes to my WD Passport via USB seem to upload pretty fast ! Maybe you can confirm this is the sort of speed I should be getting.

 

[Ponmayilal]

Transfer speeds USB3 vs USB2

Sorry, I missed the above post for 2 weeks.

Hardware:
1. SYBA 2 port USB3 PCIe expansion card with NEC UPD 720200 chip
2. Seagate GoFlex Ultraportable 1.5TB external HDD - bare drive without any adapter/cable
3. GoFlex USB3 adapter/cable (USB3)
4. GoFlex USB2 adapter/cable (USB2)









Conclusions:

1. When the HDD is coupled with the USB3 adapter/cable or USB2 adapter/cable and connected to the USB2 port,the transfer speed remains the same - 26.4MB/sec (screenshots 3 and 4)

2. When the HDD is coupled with USB2 adapter/cable and connected to the USB3 port, there is almost a 50% increase in speed - 39MB/second (screenshot 2)

3. When the HDD is coupled with the USB3 adapter/cable and connected to USB3 port, there is almost 330% increase in speed compared to the USB2 port connection - 87.1MB/sec. (screenshot 1)

This gives a general idea as to what one can expect with these combinations. Absolute values can be different for different brand HDDs.

(Keeping all conditions same, I have noted the transfer speeds in each instance after 50% of the file is copied - in this case 9.2 GB)

@ ian986, your screenshot seems to indicate that the WD passport is only performing as a USB2 device. Is it a USB3 device and did it come with a USB3 cable?

 

[ian986]

Well thanks for the reply I have since changed my motherboard and has USB 3.0 on MB and now getting this which is a lot better still not as quick as yours

 

[Ponmayilal]

^ that looks good. I presume that transfer speed may be a bit lower when copying a large number of small files than when copying one single large file, as I had done. (Not sure though, though I know both these are done in benchmarking. But from an ordinary user-perspective these differences shouldn't matter. It is enough if we know that as a USB3 device, we are getting good transfer speeds when compared to USB2)