Mouse cursor moves slow, unresponsive left clicks, when external hard drive is connected via USB.

santum53 · 09-19-2023, 11:13 PM

OS is Ubuntu 22.0 LTS.
Asus Z87 Plus Motherboard for 4th gen (2013) Core CPUs; features UEFI-Bios.
32 GB RAM.

This happened quite recently. The SATA hard drive is connected to USB adapter utilizing hotplug.

Even after unmounting the drive, it requires I physically unplug the USB cable from the motherboard, to get the mouse cursor to behave normally.

mrmazda · 09-20-2023, 12:30 AM

4th gen motherboards have a mixture of USB2 and USB3 ports. Plugging in a USB2 to SATA adapter into a USB3 or 2 port, or a USB3 to SATA adapter into a USB2 port on a 32G system could result in a lot of USB activity incomplete, completed only in RAM, but taking a long time to finish flushing to the USB connected disk, slow like common among old USB sticks. That I/O could relate to whatever automatic indexing system Ubuntu may have provided your installation.

santum53 · 09-22-2023, 08:41 AM

The problem occurs with USB flash drives, and connecting my smartphone to transfer image files. Only way to overcome the problem is to physically disconnect the device from the motherboard, even if it's just the extension cord not connecting to anything.

Seems the next step would be to replace the motherboard or install a Windows 10 and see how it behaves.

mrmazda · 09-22-2023, 12:05 PM

Open top or htop before attaching the external media to see what changes and consumes the resources when you do attach. It's rather early to assume a motherboard problem. Installing Windows is not a better step than any other distro besides a bloated Ubuntu. Try some distro in which a different DE is included. Neither of my 4th gen Intel motherboards produce any such problem with Debian, Fedora, Mageia, Mint, openSUSE or Tubuntu (*buntu without the default DE, with TDE).

fatmac · 09-23-2023, 04:34 AM

It may be a lack of power for all that you are connecting, USB sockets only provide a minimal amount, that is why there are powered hubs, which is likely what you are needing to use.