I bought a Seagate 160 GB USB 2.0 external hard drive. I've got an IBM R40 Thinkpad running Suse 9.3 kernel 2.6.11.4-21.7-default. When I plug in my USB drive, I get these error messages in /var/log/messages and dmesg:

usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 2, error -71
usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
usb 4-3: device not accepting address 3, error -71

Now, if I type in "modprobe -r ehci-hcd", then computer is happy.

Jul 12 03:34:34 linux kernel: usb 2-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
Jul 12 03:34:34 linux kernel: scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jul 12 03:34:34 linux kernel: usb-storage: device found at 2
Jul 12 03:34:34 linux kernel: usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
Jul 12 03:34:39 linux kernel: Vendor: ST316002 Model: 3A Rev: 0 0
Jul 12 03:34:39 linux kernel: Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 00
Jul 12 03:34:39 linux kernel: SCSI device sda: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
Jul 12 03:34:39 linux kernel: sda: assuming drive cache: write through
Jul 12 03:34:39 linux kernel: SCSI device sda: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
Jul 12 03:34:39 linux kernel: sda: assuming drive cache: write through
Jul 12 03:34:39 linux kernel: sda: sda1
Jul 12 03:34:39 linux kernel: Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Jul 12 03:34:39 linux kernel: Attached scsi generic sg0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0, type 0
Jul 12 03:34:39 linux kernel: usb-storage: device scan complete
Jul 12 03:34:39 linux /etc/hotplug.d/block/50-hwscan.hotplug[7969]: new block device /block/sda
Jul 12 03:34:39 linux /etc/hotplug.d/block/50-hwscan.hotplug[8011]: new block device /block/sda/sda1
Jul 12 03:34:40 linux kernel: subfs 0.9
Jul 12 03:34:40 linux hal-subfs-mount[8026]: registered at resmgrd and called(0) /bin/mount -t subfs -o fs=floppyfss,sync,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec /dev/sda1 "/media/SEAGATE"

However, from I vaguely gather, I don't want to be using uhci because it only runs at "full speed" and ehci runs at "high speed."

Does anyone know how to get this working with ehci?

You're right - it's working in USB 1.1, but not 2.0.

Could be a hardware problem, driver problem, etc.

Join the linux-usb-users list, and post. Or, have you tried that already? That would be the best place to get an answer from an expert.

Steve

I'm going to go ahead and put Windows on my laptop so I can update firmware and stuff. Sad. But thank you for the reply.