Backing up to SSD
I recently changed machines and had a spare SATA SSD which I placed it in a SATA to USB3 enclosure, really just to see what the backup performance would be like, though probably not likely to be used that way longer term. Predictably(?) the backup flew, with a complete backup of my C drive down to 20 minutes or so. Flushed with success I went to run the backup on day 2 and it was not only much, much slower, perhaps not too surprising, but on completion the PC errored with 'The last USB device you connected to this computer has malfunctioned and windows doesn't recognize it' - needless to say the drive had disappeared from File Explorer and was shown as unrecognised in Device Manager. I used diskpart to clean the drive, reformatted it and tried again with the same result - thoughts anyone?
Hallo DrMopp,
Welche Hardware wird verwendet?
Wurde ein Benchmarktest mit z.B CrystalDiskMark 8 probiert, ob die externe SSD durch belastung disconnected?
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What hardware is used?
Has a benchmark test with e.g. CrystalDiskMark 8 been tried to determine whether the external SSD disconnected due to stress?
Thanks for responding, currently swapping the disk between USB ports to identify whether disk or port is the problem. So far inconclusive, as in different port backup worked with no issues, but another disk in the first port also backed up without issues!
@Peter SSD is only 'known to be good' in that it has been a system disk in another machine for ~18mths before being 'cleaned' using diskpart and re-partitioned. It has also backed up this machine three times before this issue occurred.
I haven't run the benchmark program mentioned. The hardware is a Crucial MX500. Given up on this as a viable backup option and gone back to HDD.
Personally, I would suspect the USB 3 enclosure with the added hardware it brings. How is this powered? From the USB 3 port or with an external power supply?
Are you able to connect the SSD as an internal extra drive for testing? (direct SATA connect).
Thanks Steve, yes I will be fitting the SSD as an internal drive shortly and will test then. These enclosures are powered from the USB port. I have three of them and they have been working fine with HDD's although they certainly aren't the most robust.
Potential source of issues...
Using USB port on back panel (direct to M/B) can be more reliable than a port through front of case.
USB cable
The enclosure.
Selective suspend power setting for USB ports.
Wenn ich einen Rechner mit 2 NVMe Laufwerken verwende, funktioniert das USB 3.1 Gen2 SSD Laufwerk wie erwartet, aber die USB 3.0 Ports funktionieren bestenfalls mit HDDs (SSDs sind zu schnell und sorgen für Störungen). Ich denke das bei mir die PCIe Lanes ausgehen, um die USB 3.0 Ports verwenden zu können.
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When I use a computer with 2 NVMe drives, the USB 3.1 Gen2 SSD drive works as expected, but the USB 3.0 ports work with HDDs at best (SSDs are too fast and cause interference). I think that I run out of PCIe lanes to use the USB 3.0 ports.
Thanks Bruno, I was using the rear USB ports, and cable and enclosure were no different between the successful backups and the failed ones, although I realise errors can be intermittent.
@G.Uphoff - Interesting, my machine just has the one NVMe drive, and the USB ports I'm using are USB3.2 Gen 2 and Gen 1 (however I only noticed after reading your post that just one of the ports is Gen 2, the other three on the machine are Gen 1, which explains the backup speed difference I was getting when changing the SSD between ports, and maybe the problem, need to test some more, so thanks for that!)
The presence of USB 3 ports with different specifications can be confusing (not to mention the constant changes in the naming conventions of USB 3 connections (see here)). This seems more frequent with AMD motherboards, where some USB 3 ports are via the CPU and others by the chipset. My older i5 9400 based Intel motherboards the USB ports are all via the chipset. Sometimes there will also be a third party USB controller (my ancient GA-AX370-Gaming 5 in addition to chipset and CPU also has an ASMedia USB controller).
Ian
Further testing failed to replicate the original issue. I ran the same backup task on three different ports with the following results:
| USB 3.2 | Gen 2 | Front Panel | 57mins | 52mins |
| USB 3.2 | Gen 2 | Rear | 11mins | 8mins |
| USB 3.2 | Gen 1 | Rear | 11mins | 8mins |
So no difference in performance between the Gen 2 and Gen 1 ports, presumably because the limit of the SATA interface in the enclosure or the SSD speed limit has been reached with the Gen 1 port (?) but using the front panel Gen 2 port is markedly slower. Still doesn't explain the original problem though, so I guess it's time to admit defeat, open the case and mount the disk internally to rule out cable/enclosure issues.
@DrMopp, you are seeing good times on the two rear ports and a slow time on the front port. This is not unusual.
The two rear ports are direct into the motherboard. The front port would be connected by a cable from a motherboard port to the USB port in the PC case. It is recommended with drives to plug them directly into rear ports to avoid this extra link in the chain.
As @BrunoC says, frequently speed achieved on USB ports that are not "direct to the motherboard" can be substantially less; there is an additional connection to the motherboard - sometimes this can be suboptimal and the quality of the USB cable and port on the case may also be problematic.
Ian
Thanks Ian and BrunoC I wasn't concerned about the speed differential between front and rear ports as it's entirely understandable as you say, the speed recording was incidental to my attempts to replicate the initial 'the last USB device you connected to this machine has malfunctioned and Windows does not recognise it' error, which occurred with the drive connected to a rear port (not sure whether Gen 1 or 2) However those attempts were unsuccessful and the error hasn't recurred.