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[shAf]

I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced my problem?

I had been using a Seagate 1.5Tb external USB v2 drive for my media (music & DVD backups).  It was running low on space so I replaced it with a WD 3TB USB v3 drive that should have been compatible with USB v2.  I copied all files to the new drive and put the older drive into another use ... all good so far ...

I'm experiencing 2 problems:
(1)  When I ask Nero Recode (v10) to back up a DVD it gags on writing the 1st file and quits with a failure message, and the VOB will be empty.

(2)  If I ask MC17 to play one of the previously backed up DVDs (previously written to the older drive, copied to new), it will not play.

If I do either of the above, but either (1) ask it to write to an internal drive, or (2) read from an internal drive (e.g., after copying from the new external drive), it will work perfectly.

I am thinking that WD thoroughly tested USB3=>USB2 compatibility with respect to Windows 7 OS operations, but didn't thoroughly test compatibility with respect to softwares.  So the question that some of you may be able to answer is about USB 3 and other manufacturers (e.g., Seagate).  That is, most 3Tb drives on the market today are USB 3, and supposedly USB 2 compatible, and I don't want to go through this again.  Anyone have experience?

TIA 

[glynor]

USB3 is backwards compatible with USB2 and 1.  Meaning, any device certified to work on USB, should work on USB3 no matter what (though not at any higher speeds than it would using its native connection type).

What USB3 chipset/controller do you have on your motherboard?

I've heard LOTS of reports of driver flakiness with most of the third-party solutions.  Only the Intel Ivy Bridge and the ASMedia implementations are worth anything, but I've had driver flakiness with my ASMedia-based ports already as well.

[shAf]

...
What USB3 chipset/controller do you have on your motherboard?
...

hello Glynor ... and thanks for a prompt response!

I believe you misunderstood ... my mobo provides only for USB2 ... therefore the external USB3 drive is connected  to USB2

Regarding compatibility USB3/USB2 ... yes, that all looks good on paper ... but this is the 2nd drive I've tested and neither work well with MC17 

[Scolex]

Regarding compatibility USB3/USB2 ... yes, that all looks good on paper ... but this is the 2nd drive I've tested and neither work well with MC17 

When you tried the 2 different drives did you use the same USB cable?

[glynor]

Ahh... I did misunderstand.

No, they do NOT all work the other way around (a USB3 device on a USB2 bus).  Some will, but hard drives might be tough.  It'll depend on the USB3 chipset in the device itself, and on the specifics of your machine.

Generally, the rule of thumb is this:

1. "Simple things" like USB Thumb Drives will work fine on the slower bus, they'll just perform badly (often worse than a USB2 native device would have).
2. Things like cameras and other A/V interfaces will almost never work right, or at all.
3. Hard drives fall somewhere in the middle.  It'll "depend" on how the drive was implemented internally, and the USB hub drivers on your system (AMD will be much more troublesome than Intel, and third-party controllers will be a disaster).  Faster drives (anything SSD based for sure), or bus-powered drives (little pocket jobs), are going to be very difficult to get working.

If you have a free PCIe port, I'd look for an ASMedia-based USB3 add-in card and be done with it.  You can find them for $35-50 now.  Just try to get one with the ASMedia USB controller if you can, as opposed to the NEC one or anything from JMicron.  A few others might be fine, but I've had LOTS of trouble with those two (though it has been a while).

[glynor]

When you tried the 2 different drives did you use the same USB cable?

That's also a very good point.

For what it's worth, I have two of these (one the more expensive one, and one the cheaper USB3-only one) and it works fine on my USB2 ports on multiple machines.  Makes sense because they sell primarily to Mac-users, and Apple only just now added USB3 to their systems, so backwards compatibility had to be essential to them.

[shAf]

When you tried the 2 different drives did you use the same USB cable?

Both drives behaved exactly the same ... both with each of their own cables.  If I swapped cables I doubt there would have been any difference.

Regarding the USB3 driver for the drives ... that's a good question.  The drive arrived with driver msi installers (32 & 64bit), but running installer didn't do anything "seemingly" ... and if I check the drive properties, Microsoft is still the driver manufacturer(?)  I spent a couple of hrs with WD support last night and he didn't know anything about the drivers ... and in the end wanted me to reformat the drive.  He gave me a procedure that would wipe the drive before partitioning and formatting, which was supposed to take 15 minutes ... that was 10 hrs ago, and there's still 14 hrs remaining on the ETA.  I've come to the conclusion WD support is a bunch of idiots ...  I've ordered a similar Seagate expansion drive ... I can only hope their USB3 implementation is different (... cannot be worse?) ... stay tuned.

Thanks Glynor for the PCIe card suggestion ... I'll consider it

[glynor]

The drive arrived with driver msi installers (32 & 64bit), but running installer didn't do anything "seemingly" ... and if I check the drive properties, Microsoft is still the driver manufacturer(?) 

Not the drive's drivers, the motherboard's.  What kind of motherboard do you have?  Is it an AMD board or an Intel board?

The drive arrived with driver msi installers (32 & 64bit), but running installer didn't do anything "seemingly"

They probably wouldn't.

It sounds to me like you might just have a bad drive, but perhaps not.  Wiping an entire drive with a low-level format, over USB2, is going to take a LONG time.

[shAf]

What kind of motherboard do you have?  Is it an AMD board or an Intel board?

It's a Asus mobo with HDMI and with Intel CPU ... maybe a couple of years old, but well within the USB2 timeline (I would think).  The last I checked, the firmware was up to date

It sounds to me like you might just have a bad drive, but perhaps not.  Wiping an entire drive with a low-level format, over USB2, is going to take a LONG time.

Tell me about it 

[glynor]

It's a Asus mobo with HDMI and with Intel CPU

Okay, then it is likely NOT due to USB2 implementation flakiness, since it is an Intel board.  That's what I was trying to suss out.  If it was an AMD board, then we'd be having a different discussion.

Just get a USB3 add-in card.  Here's one for less than $30 with the promo code.  It is based on the (slower) NEC controller, but it'll work fine for your purposes.  Besides, you almost certainly don't have PCIe2 on that board, so even if you got a faster one, you'd be bus limited to the NEC-like speeds.  There are tons of other ones out there, and people seem happy with the NEC-based card's drivers.

The main problem with the NEC controller is that the PCIe interface on it is too slow to support the full bandwidth of USB3.  But, like I said, your slots would be too, so don't even worry about that.

[shAf]

Okay, then it is likely NOT due to USB2 implementation flakiness, since it is an Intel board.  That's what I was trying to suss out.  If it was an AMD board, then we'd be having a different discussion.

Just get a USB3 add-in card.  ...

Thanks for the suggestion.  I'll certainly know tomorrow better about the compatibility problem with respect to WD's suggestion that my system low-level format the drive ... and wouldn't you know after the LL format comes the NTFS format, and that will take 30 hours as well ... stay tuned ...

[glynor]

No.  If you just did a low-level format, you don't need to do a "full format" to NTFS.  Just do the quick one (the default).  That's the same thing in this instance.

[shAf]

Just thought I'd bring everyone up to date on this problem ...

I purchased & installed the USB3 PCIe card that Glynor suggested, but the drive behaves the same way (Nero Recode refusing to failing to it, and MC17 stopping in the middle of DVD chapters -- try do do the same thing with a USB2 external drive and it works perfectly).

I also purchased another similar USB3 3Tb drive, but Seagate instead of WD ... same problem(!!)

Therefore, I have to believe it's my Asus P5E-VM HDMI mobo, which Asus doesn't support for Win7 ... but Win7 installation testing implies it should work (for 32bit & 64bit).  In any case, it's not a rigorously tested Windows 7 installation, and apparently USB3 compatibility is looking for something different.

So ... I suppose it's time for a new computer and I'll use this 3Tb drive as backup in the meantime ...

Cheerios from the Avalon