Disk I/O stalls using USB2

[neon]

Up here in Toronto, a local computer store had a special on 200 gig
seagate barracudas ($100US) so I bought a couple, as well as a
Diablo!! USB/firewire pci i/o card & a Ultra USB2/firewire disk
enclosure. Thought it was time to do some serious backups of video and
audio files. Now I've run into a USB problem.
When I play a dvd (using PowerDVD) from a seagate in the enclosure,
through a USB port, the movie will stall for about 10 seconds then
continue (at nearly the right spot). This happens about 4 or 5 or more
times through a movie - very repeatable. When I use the fast forward
2x 4x 8x 16x the movie will play for shorter & shorter periods,
depending on rate, stall (10 sec), then continue and stall and
continue......
When I switch the enclosure connection to firewire - no stall -
even at 32x. When I copy the movie to an internal drive and play -
no stall.
See lots of references to USB stalls on different devices, mainly
amongst the Linux guys, but no definitive answers.
Any suggestions?

tech details:
XP Prof/sp1 - asus p4b - p4/1.6 - 512 mb memory
primary master - ibm 30 gig slave - maxtor 80 gig
secondary master - burner slave - dvd reader
promise primary master - maxtor 80 gig slave - maxtor 60 gig
promise secondary master - maxtor 200 gig slave seagate 200 gig
enclosure - 200 gig seagate
all disks fat 32 except 200s which are ntfs & all disks 1 partition

 

[Arno Wagner]

I had a similar problem under Linux. It turned out that with USB2.0
there were so many interface errors, that the kernel decided
after a while that the device was unusable (i.e. compete disconnect,
only removing the drvice and reconnecting it helped).

Using a different USB cable (one certified for 2.0) helped a little,
but did not remove the fundamental problem. It just took longer to
crash. No such problems with Firewire here as well, seems that bus is
better designed.

My fix is to use Firewire for fast transfers and for others to
stick to old, slow USB 1.0. Recently I have also started to
use a self-designed external SATA solution for backups. Ugly,
HDD is "nakced", but very fast and no interface problems at all.
I expect that most external storage will move to SATA in the
future.

Arno

 

[neon]

Trick, yeh. And I have a technically interesting & reproducable
problem & no takers. Can you recommend where I should go, Usenet, a
specific Forum, or?

Like you, I have engineered additional, cheap hard drive capability.
As you can see from my post I have 8 devices on the MB & Promise
controller. I run the cable to the outside where I have the 2 200mb
drives. Use a power supply ($5) & a couple of drive rails ($.50) to
make a stack. Utilty said SMART reports 34-36 degrees so no need for
fan (I utilize PS positioning).

 

[Arno Wagner]

Trick, yeh. And I have a technically interesting & reproducable
problem & no takers. Can you recommend where I should go, Usenet, a
specific Forum, or?

Ordinarily I would say Kernel mailing list, but there is no such
thing for your OS. For Linux the problem has been fixed
by now it seems.

One more thing you can try: When I had the problem initially,
I had it with VIA in-chipset interfaces. It worked with a NEC
based PCI card from D-Link. However that card caused massive
interference with sound, so I removed it again.

So maybe you should contact the manufacturer of you USB interface
chip in your PC. Maybe they also have newer drivers, although USB
is supposed to work with generic drivers.

Like you, I have engineered additional, cheap hard drive capability.
As you can see from my post I have 8 devices on the MB & Promise
controller. I run the cable to the outside where I have the 2 200mb
drives. Use a power supply ($5) & a couple of drive rails ($.50) to
make a stack. Utilty said SMART reports 34-36 degrees so no need for
fan (I utilize PS positioning).

Yes, as soon as USB is mature and stable (still not there yet,
today I had a crypto-token that didn't work with a hub), this
will be a great way to add storage. Give it another year or
two...

Arno