Question USB 3.0 Flash drives not working right on new system?

[taisingera]

I have a strange problem. I just put together an i3 10100 with Asus Prime H470M-Plus and it has two USB 3.0 internal headers. My case has a single USB 3.0 so I have that plugged into one and I have a 3.5'" panel dual USB 3.0 connected to the other header. On my old motherboard (Intel PCH) as well as two laptops with USB3.0 bridge chips (Renasas), the flash drives work fine. These are two Mushkin Ventura Plus 32GB and 16GB drives that according to USBDeview take 504mA of power. On the new system, on the case USB3.0 the drives just start flashing and connect and disconnect. On the panel ports, they are detected but once I either try running CrystalDisk Mark or copying a larger file, the drive starts disconnecting and reconnecting constantly. I have tried all other USB3.0 flash drives that I have, Sandisk Flair, Gorilla, and Samsung Bar Plus and they seem to have no issues. The Mushkins do work on the motherboard ports without a problem.

Are these front ports not delivering enough power for the Mushkin drives or is there some incompatibility? BTW, I connected an 800mA 2.5" hard drive in a USB3.0 enclosure and it connected and wrote fine on the front ports.

 

[Steltek]

Here is something you can try. Unplug any flash drives installed on the system. Then, launch an elevated command prompt and enter the following command:



When Device Manager launches, do the following:



Now, expand the Disk Drives section of Device Manager. An example (yours will look differently) follows:



The highlighted driver is for a Lexar USB drive that isn't present on my system (you know it isn't present because its icon is grayed out). You should have a similar driver in your Device Manager for your Mushkin flash drives. Right click on that driver, and uninstall it. Then, restart the system.

Once the system restarts, try to use the USB drive on the problem port to see if the issue is resolved.

If the drive still has the problem, there is an additional step you can take.
Repeat the above steps, but before restarting also do the following:

In Device manager, go to the Universal Serial Bus Controllers section in Device Manager (example follows). It will look something like this:





You should have a "USB Mass Storage Device" driver installed for each flash drive you've used on your system. Since no flash drives are now in use, all of them should be grayed out. Right click on each of them, then uninstall all of them one at a time. It won't hurt to do this as each one will get reinstalled the next time a flash drive is accessed.

Shut down and restart. Try to access the problem drive again. With luck, the problem will be resolved.

 

[taisingera]

The first step you mentioned worked great. Now I can write to the flash drive without it disconnecting. Only in the front panel USB3.0 ports does it work, not on the case one, but at least 2 of 3 ports work.

 

[Steltek]

If other USB drives work properly in the case port, then there is still a driver problem. You might want to proceed to the 2nd step as well above as every flash drive has to have two drivers, and the first step only removes one of them.

Additionally, if you have any grayed out "Unknown devices" in the USB section, you could try to right-click and uninstall them followed by a restart. It is possible Windows isn't properly detecting the flash drive on the case USB hub port due to a hanging driver.

If you are getting a yellow explanation point on the USB drive device in Device Manager when it is plugged in to the problem USB port, try running the Windows Hardware Troubleshooter (you can get to it by searching for Control Panel in the Windows Search Box) for hardware and devices to see if Windows can fix it. You may have to restart when it completes repairs.

Another thing you can try is to right-click on each of the USB hubs in Device Manager, then uninstall each of the drivers. When you reboot, Windows should (if everything is working properly) re-detect the hubs and re-install the drivers. You can also try to re-install the USB3.0 drivers for the motherboard as well.