Whats wrong with my case, 3.0 USB sticks work fine but 2.0 does not ?

[Wolf11]

I've only have my case for about 6 months and for the most part I've only been using my two Mushkin 3.0 USB sticks. I do have three Older Mushkin 2.0 USB sticks in 8GB/16GB/32GB versions also but I have not used them in a while. Anyway this past week I decided I wanted to use one. So I plugged it in the front USB 3.0 slots they are 3.0 cause they are colored blue and I have them plugged into the motherboard with the 3.0 cable that's part of the case.

So what happens is that whenever I plug the 2.0 sticks or any of the three they all either fail right away or during transfer of data from the HDD to the stick it freezes. Also sometimes the stick works okay and the file transfer works which is odd, but most of the time it don't work and I have to physically disconnect the stick cause the remove hardware icon by clock won't work and won't release the stick for me.

Here's the kicker though my Mushkin 3.0 USB sticks work fine no problems. I should mention though the 2.0 sticks do work fine in the back of the computer slots the ones directly on the motherboard both the 2.0/3.0 slots work fine with any stick. It's only the ones in the front that don't work with the 2.0 sticks.

So whats wrong, is the header in front broken somehow. I unplugged the USB header cable from the motherboard and back in and it's still not working correctly.

My motherboard uses a third party controller for USB 3.0 to work. It wasn't till Z77 boards that 3.0 became Intel native, not sure if this is a cause or not probably not. thanks

 

[bamato]

Sounds like it's have legacy support issues on the 3.0 header. Do you have updated drivers for the 3rd party controller?

 

[Wolf11]

I checked I have the latest drivers. Is this a motherboard/driver problem or is it a problem with my USB slots my case is pretty new it's the Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 FD-CA-ARC-R2. All the sticks work off the back of the motherboard slots. I'd like to narrow down to what is causing this.

Just a thought, I'm at work right now but on the 3.0 cable that comes from the front slots is plugged into the header on the motherboard. There's another cable a 2.0 cable that comes from the front header too, that cable is not connected to the motherboard. It's kinda like two cables in one, there's the 3.0 cable and kinda attached to it is a 2.0 cable. I don't think your suppose to connect both it's one or the other, correct ?

 

[MattNo5ss]

You shouldn't have to connect both the USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 cables from the front panel. Have you tried plugging in just the USB 2.0 cable to the motherboard header then see if the ports work with your USB 2.0 drives? That would let you know whether it's the ports themselves or the USB 3.0 controller not letting you use USB 2.0 drives.

 

[Wolf11]

You shouldn't have to connect both the USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 cables from the front panel. Have you tried plugging in just the USB 2.0 cable to the motherboard header then see if the ports work with your USB 2.0 drives? That would let you know whether it's the ports themselves or the USB 3.0 controller not letting you use USB 2.0 drives.

Should I try first to plug them both in to see if that works, or do what you said first ?
thanks

 

[Lvcoyote]

Do what Matt said first, you don't want both ends of that cable installed to the motherboard at the same time. The USB 2.0 end is just there for people who don't have a 3.0 header on their motherboard.

 

[Wolf11]

Well before I disconnect anything and reconnect anything. I bought a new sandisk 2.0 stick and it works fine in all slots, it works fine where the three mushkin 2.0 USB's failed. The mushkin 3.0 USB work great also I never had a problem with the mushkin 3.0 sticks it was just the older 2.0 ones. Is this odd by the way that some sticks won't work right with certain PC's ?