# A WD MyPassport 250GB turns my PC Off

## alexlm78

Hi, yesterday i brougth a Western Digitar External HD (MyPassport 250GB) but when i try to connect to my Gentoo box, my PC just turn off and restart at bios.

My PC is a AMD Athon 3400+ on a ASRocks motherboard 2 HD IDE, DVD burner, 1GB RAM and Gentoo with a gentoo-sources 2.6.18 (yes i know, i have to update my kernel).

i try to connect in windows but in this case, restart it again, and later just don't reconigsed it eatheir.

I try it connect in my laptop, a Sempron movil (Compaq Presario F505LA) and works fine, and my office PC a Dell Optiplex 170L and works too.

I don't know what happes, if you have ideas, please let me know.

P.D. I made this post, because i made a search in the gentoo forums and nothig about this explicit was writen, but maybe can bu usefull for everybody when i'll find a solution.

Saluditos.

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## NeddySeagoon

alexlm78,

I suspect you have a USB drive powered down the USB cable (no seperate) PSU.

If it provides you two USB cables you must connect them both to separate USB root hubs as it needs more power than a single USB root hub can provide.

USB ports have over current protection. I suspect you are triggering this overcurrent trip.

Each USB root hub normally provides two stacked USB connectors so you must *not* use both connectors in a stacked pair.

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## alexlm78

Thanks, i'll be check this.

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## eccerr0r

My Athlon XP2200+ does this too.

Well, It's not the CPU I don't think, but rather, the fairly low-quality motherboard: a ECS K7S5A v5.0, or perhaps the case causes shorts that the motherboard does not properly account for, likely causing some voltage droop that causes the USB chip (southbridge? forgot if it was that or the LPC Multi-IO chip that provides USB1) to reset.  This ends up causing the machine to reboot when I plug them into the front panel USB connectors, regardless if it's a mouse or disk drive.  The rear panel ones appear to work fine, however (then again, they're using a different USB to PCI bridge)...  Weird!

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## NeddySeagoon

eccerr0r,

That triggers another thought.

Many motherboards have a jumper per root hub to select the source of the 5V for powering connected USB devices.

The choice is the normal 5V or 5VSTBY.

The latter allows the keyboard to be powered with the system 'off', so you can wake it up from a USB keyboard.

5VSTBYwill not provide enough power to operate a HDD, so reboots and strange behaviour is to be expected.

The normal 5V, which can supply 10's Amps were it not for the 500mA limit on the USB port is off unless the machine is operating.

Check your USB power jumper(s) if you have them.

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## Kasumi_Ninja

 *NeddySeagoon wrote:*   

> alexlm78,
> 
> I suspect you have a USB drive powered down the USB cable (no seperate) PSU.
> 
> If it provides you two USB cables you must connect them both to separate USB root hubs as it needs more power than a single USB root hub can provide.
> ...

 

I won the same (albeit only 160GB) hard drive. It is powered through a single usb connection. The only problems I encountered is when connecting to a usb 1 port, the drive didn't  receive enough power and started to tick.

@alexlm78

Do you have usb 1 or usb2 ports? It might be worthwhile to invest in an USB PCI card (without via chipset). They are relatively cheap and can can safe  you a lot of work?

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## NeddySeagoon

Aniruddha,

Powered hubs work well to solve USB power problems too.

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## Kasumi_Ninja

 *NeddySeagoon wrote:*   

> Aniruddha,
> 
> Powered hubs work well to solve USB power problems too.

 

I believe you, I only wanted to point out an alternative option  :Wink: 

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