# USB Mass Storage device blocking the system

## phunkphorce

Hi,

I recently purchased an external USB-to-IDE (or IDE-to-USB, as you wish  :Smile: ) adaptor where you can fit any IDE device to be accessed as an external USB device using USB 1 or 2. In my case I attached to that a Fujitsu hard disk with 30gb of extra space, and my laptop unfortunately doesn't have USB2 so I have to do away with USB1. The device is an external case made by asian manufacturer EagleTec, and I already run into some trouble when trying to configure it (http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/showdev.php?id=1303)

After getting my Gentoo setup to detect it I'm mainly using the external hard disk to keep my mp3 collection, and playing them indeed works fine. Troubles come when I try to transfer any large file to the external disk (I have mp3 files of around 100-150mb in some cases) Everything works fine but sometimes the system totally blocks and I can barely do anything. It becomes totally unresponsive  :Question: 

Has anybody had the same problem? Is it a limitation of USB1 or have I misconfigured something?

I'm attaching here the output of dmesg if that helps...

```
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00

hub.c: USB new device connect on bus1/1, assigned device number 2

usb.c: USB device 2 (vend/prod 0x5e3/0x702) is not claimed by any active driver.

Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...

usb.c: registered new driver usb-storage

scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices

  Vendor: FUJITSU   Model: MPG3307AT   F     Rev: 0811

  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 02

Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0

SCSI device sda: 60046560 512-byte hdwr sectors (30744 MB)

 /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1

WARNING: USB Mass Storage data integrity not assured

USB Mass Storage device found at 2

USB Mass Storage support registered.

```

Thanks for your help  :Smile: 

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## phunkphorce

Does anybody have any idea about this? Pleeeeeeeeease, I'm quite confused about this...   :Confused: 

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## drakonite

Does the system recover after the file is done transfering (i.e. the system just slows waaaaaaay down while it's copying) or does it completly lock up?

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## phunkphorce

 *drakonite wrote:*   

> Does the system recover after the file is done transfering (i.e. the system just slows waaaaaaay down while it's copying) or does it completly lock up?

 

It simply blocks for a while (4-5 sec) and then works fine again...

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## drakonite

By any chance do you know what chipset your motherboard uses?

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## phunkphorce

 *drakonite wrote:*   

> By any chance do you know what chipset your motherboard uses?

 

It's an Intel 440BX running with a Celeron Mobile 700Mhz.

I also use often an external USB Cd-burner and I haven't experienced this kind of problems yet... I haven't transferred though big files from the burner to the internal hard disk, but I'll try today as soon as I get home, to see if I can reproduce the problem.

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## drakonite

Hmm... Well I was asking because I had a similar problem with my (internal) hard drive for a while.  I have a via chipset and had forgot to compile in the correct support in the kernel so it wasn't using the busmastering drivers...

The only idea I have for you is to make sure you have things configured in your kernel correctly for the chipset and everything else.

Sorry for the lack of help.

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## phunkphorce

 *Quote:*   

> Sorry for the lack of help.

 

Oh never mind  :Smile:  At least you tried!

I'll keep researching on my own, maybe I can find something...

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## pyro-x

Hi  phunkphorce

I recently bought an external 2.5 drive that uses the same chipset and it is a fujitsu drive too. Well, it seems im having the same problem. When i transfer big files to the hard disk, i get some 3-4 secs  locks up. 

I have USB 1.1 and 2.0, and with 2.0 it doesn't work neither  :Sad: . When transfering data using 2.0 the computer doesn't lock up but the usb-storage modules get crazy and loose it connection with the disk, and you can only get it work again reconnecting the drive. Sooo.. it seems i will have to stay with 1.1 :-\

Did you finally found some way to fix the lockups?, im thinking about getting a new kernel (2.4.21 perhaps?) and try with it..

Many thanx

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## phunkphorce

No, unfortunately I didn't manage to fix the problem with the lockups...  :Sad:  I eventually gave up inverstigating because after all I don't have to transfer data to the usb drive so often (I just use to store my collection of mp3) but whenever I have to copy some more files it's _really_ annoying!

If I happen to figure out anything else I'll post it here. Good luck and thanks anyway!   :Cool: 

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