USB Hard-disk suddenly dissapears from system
 

I have this annoying problem: the USB HD can be connected and detected without problem. But after a while (maybe 10-30 min after connected) the system looses it. There is no way to make it back, only by rebooting SLED 10 completely. Then again the cycle is repeated.

The command dmesg gives this:

uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.2: host system error, PCI problems?
uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.2: host controller halted, very bad!
uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.2: HC died; cleaning up
usb 1-2: USB disconnect, address 2
sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x10000
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 155691663
sd 0:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to device being removed
sd 0:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to device being removed
sd 0:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to device being removed
sd 0:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to device being removed
(repeated so many times)...
Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 19028
lost page write due to I/O error on sda1
sd 0:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to device being removed
Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 95321
lost page write due to I/O error on sda1
Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 95322
lost page write due to I/O error on sda1
Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 95323
lost page write due to I/O error on sda1
repeated so many times.....

Any help will be appreciated.

My first thought is, if the drive seems to shut down after a certain amount of time, there may well be something in the firmware of the drive unit that allows the drive to spin down. Linux sometimes has problems with drives that spin down, be they hard drives or CDROM drives. I would suggest you check the documentation on the drive unit. Pay particular attention to anything that says it allows the drive to spin down. There may be something in the instructions that allows you to stop the drive from spinning down.

Please let me know if that helps.

Blessed be!
Pappy

Re: Lost usb drive/ hdd.
 

If you have the usb plugged into the front of the case it might time out either by not having enough power or it might be just cut the connection if it is idle, try connecting it to the back of your computer, if you are still having the same problem you will have to search for the usb device (when it is live) and in properties look for spindle times or something simular.:scratch:

Bad USB hub?
 

It appears the problem is with the USB hub:

uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.2: host system error, PCI problems?
uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.2: host controller halted, very bad!
uhci_hcd 0000:00:07.2: HC died; cleaning up

Is this connected through an external hub?

Does something appear to be running a bit hot?

The USB disc: is this externally powered or get's it's power through the hub.

Try downloading a live Ubuntu or Fedora disc and see if it still happens.

Only other thing I acan think of is that you have IRQ problems.

Do you have lots of internal cards in the PC?

If the drive can be accessed by "hdparm" you can get/set the power-down parameters. So perhaps ;).

I'm seeing a remarkably similar problem: *not* with a USB hard drive, but with either of a ByteStor flash memory stick, or a Targus cordless mouse. In my case, there is no (even approximately) regular interval between connection and failure. Sometimes the device will remain live for several hours; others it dies immediately on connection.

I just stumbled across this thread, on first googling this problem, so I haven't yet formulated much of a plan for resolving it. My first thought is a potential IRQ conflict, but the dmesg diagnostics don't offer much of a clue. Since neither of my devices has a spindle to spin down, it seems like that may be a red herring here.

FWIW, I'm seeing this only on my OpenSUSE 10.0 desktop machine; the flash drive is rock solid on my laptop with Ubuntu 6.06, (on which the cordless mouse is recognised on connection, but refuses to actually work). I used to run Mandrake 8.2 on the desktop box, and never experienced this problem. However, I've installed an ethernet card, and switched up from a 512MB to a 2GB flash drive since then, so there may be other factors at play.

...and FTR:
...so the two usb ports are sharing IRQ 11 with ide3. This is an ABIT KT7-RAID mobo; ide3 is one of the two onboard HPT-370 RAID controller channels. It wasn't enabled when I was running Mandrake 8.2, but it is now, and OpenSUSE 10.0 is on the hdd attached to it. Maybe a conflict there?

I have an external USB drive and it is managed by the kernel high speed USB module 'ehci_hcd' (USB 2.0). There may be some timing issues when using UCHI (USB 1.0/1.1). If your USB port is older it may not support 2.0. That was the case with my old eMachine. I got a PCI USB 2.0 card and plugged the drive into it and the ehci module loaded right up.