Problem with Windows 7 x64 SP1 and SATA-to-USB 3.0 HDD docking station

[PartingShot]

I was wondering if anyone else has had issues of external hard disk drives "disappearing then reappearing" on their Win7 x64 computers when connected via USB 3.0.

My living room HTPC has the following mobo/OS specs:
MB: Asus P8Z68-V Pro/Gen3
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium x64 SP1

The mobo has the latest chipset drivers, including for the USB 3.0 Controller (ASMedia).

When I connect any USB 2.x device to the USB 3.0 port, everything is fine.

When I connect a 3TB Seagate GoFlex external HDD drive w/ USB 3.0, everything is fine.

When I connect an internal HDD using a SATA-to-USB 3.0 docking station (ICY DOCK MB981U3-1SA), the drive disconnects/disappears/drops out from the system during a file transfer, either to or from the drive. The drive will then reconnect, but the data is lost.

Tried multiple HDDs in the ICY DOCK, and multiple USB 3.0 cables. Same result.

Then I tried the same ICY DOCK HDD docking station on another PC with that has USB 3.0, which runs under Windows XP Professional x86 SP3. No problems whatsoever.

Quick googling indicates that Windows 7, which does not support USB 3.0 natively, has some issues with some USB 3.0 peripherals.

I just wanted to check in here to see if anyone else has ever seen the same issue with their Windows 7 PCs when connecting to a HDD docking station via USB 3.0.

Thanks for reading, and for any feedback

[aedipuss]

i use plenty of usb3 devices here with win7 just fine. it's your chipset/driver that may be your win7 problem. win xp doesn't support usb3 any more than win7 does.

[hello_hello]

I had pretty much the same problem using a USB3 dock and a PCI Express USB3 card, running XP. If it didn't drop out while transferring files it'd often only connect at USB2 speed. It drove me nuts for a while. My PC is slightly overclocked, but one day I discovered with overclocking disabled the problem went away, which led me to look for the solution in a place I'd not thought about until then. Anyway.....

In my case the solution was to go into the BIOS and manually set the PCI Express bus speed to 100Hz rather than leave it on auto. Even if your USB3 is built into the motherboard it might pay to give that a shot. I recall reading a few forum posts regarding Asus USB3 motherboards a year or two ago, the owners of which were experiencing similar problems and I think manually setting the PCI Express bus speed still seemed to be the fix. It can't hurt to try. If 100Hz doesn't make it more stable, try 99Hz or 101Hz etc to see if either make a difference. In my case setting it to 100Hz solved the problem completely, even when the PC is running overclocked.

If your PC isn't over-clocked, try it anyway. There's a second PC here (same Gigabyte MB) with an Nvidia card which won't reliably boot with the PCI Express setting in the BIOS on Auto or 100Hz. Often it'll freeze while the card just displays gibberish on the monitor. Once I set the bus speed to 99Hz it boots properly every time. Computers are vicious bastards.....

If you try it please post back with the result.

[PartingShot]

Thank you aedipuss and hello_hello for your replies

Well the problem turned out to be the front panel card reader I was using when the problems were occuring... a little something that I failed to mention in my first post. Apologies for my omission of relevant information.

The mobo has 2x USB 3.0 ports at the rear, plus a 20-pin header socket for adding front panel USB 3.0 port connectivity. When I built the HTPC, I mounted a front panel card reader that has a USB 3.0 port. This card reader uses a connector cable that attaches to the 20-pin header for USB 3.0 on the mobo, and it is through this interface that the problems have been experienced.

So I decided to try connecting the USB 3.0 HDD docking station to one of the rear USB 3.0 ports instead of the front panel port. The rear ports are somewhat difficult to access in the HTPC's current location, which is why I didn't try this out sooner.

This resulted in a successful USB 3.0 connection, and I was able to transfer 1.2TB of data to the HDD mounted in the docking station.

So now I have a USB 3.0 extension cable running from the rear USB 3.0 port so I can easily attach any USB 3.0 peripheral to the system. I will use the front panel connection for USB 2.x only.

Thanks again for the responses. They are very much appreciated.