External drive doesn't work

Question

Level 1

8 points

External drive doesn't work

I have a new Toshiba external 1TB drive, 2.5 USB 3.0 connector. It works fine with my iMac but the Macbook Air will not connect to it. kernel.log:

Nov 20 14:06:36 Matthews-MacBook-Air kernel[0]: 0 0 AppleUSBCDC: start - initDevice failed

Nov 20 14:06:36 Matthews-MacBook-Air kernel[0]: USBMSC Identifier (non-unique): 2011100620790 0x480 0xa006 0x1

Nov 20 14:06:41 Matthews-MacBook-Air kernel[0]: USBF: 1016. 59 AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800b8e5000]::Found a transaction which hasn't moved in 5 seconds on bus 0xfa, timing out! (Addr: 6, EP: 0)

Nov 20 14:06:52 Matthews-MacBook-Air kernel[0]: USBF: 1027. 66 AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800b8e5000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 0xfa, timing out! (Addr: 6, EP: 2)

Nov 20 14:06:58 Matthews-MacBook-Air kernel[0]: USBF: 1033. 68 AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800b8e5000]::Found a transaction which hasn't moved in 5 seconds on bus 0xfa, timing out! (Addr: 0, EP: 0)

Nov 20 14:07:04 Matthews-MacBook-Air kernel[0]: USBF: 1039. 71 AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800b8e5000]::Found a transaction which hasn't moved in 5 seconds on bus 0xfa, timing out! (Addr: 0, EP: 0)

Nov 20 14:07:05 Matthews-MacBook-Air kernel[0]: USBF: 1039.103 [0xffffff800ba65e00] The IOUSBFamily is having trouble enumerating a USB device that has been plugged in. It will keep retrying. (Port 3 of Hub at 0xfa100000)

Nov 20 14:07:16 Matthews-MacBook-Air kernel[0]: USBF: 1051. 73 AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800b8e5000]::Found a transaction which hasn't moved in 5 seconds on bus 0xfa, timing out! (Addr: 0, EP: 0)

Nov 20 14:07:22 Matthews-MacBook-Air kernel[0]: USBF: 1057. 76 AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800b8e5000]::Found a transaction which hasn't moved in 5 seconds on bus 0xfa, timing out! (Addr: 0, EP: 0)

Nov 20 14:07:28 Matthews-MacBook-Air kernel[0]: USBF: 1063. 81 AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800b8e5000]::Found a transaction which hasn't moved in 5 seconds on bus 0xfa, timing out! (Addr: 0, EP: 0)

Nov 20 14:07:34 Matthews-MacBook-Air kernel[0]: USBF: 1069. 85 AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800b8e5000]::Found a transaction which hasn't moved in 5 seconds on bus 0xfa, timing out! (Addr: 0, EP: 0)

Nov 20 14:07:40 Matthews-MacBook-Air kernel[0]: USBF: 1075. 88 AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800b8e5000]::Found a transaction which hasn't moved in 5 seconds on bus 0xfa, timing out! (Addr: 0, EP: 0)

Nov 20 14:07:46 Matthews-MacBook-Air kernel[0]: USBF: 1081. 90 AppleUSBEHCI[0xffffff800b8e5000]::Found a transaction which hasn't moved in 5 seconds on bus 0xfa, timing out! (Addr: 0, EP: 0)

Nov 20 14:07:47 Matthews-MacBook-Air kernel[0]: USBF: 1081.627 [0xffffff800ba65e00] The IOUSBFamily was not able to enumerate a device.

What's up?

MacBook Air

Posted on Nov 20, 2011 11:26 AM

Reply

Answer 1

MDanihy Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 20, 2011 12:04 PM in response to MDanihy

Upon further Google searches, it seems the Macbook air cannot accomodate USB3 devices plugged into it's USB2 ports. Must be a power issue. The drive spins up but disk utility never shows the drive.

Reply

Answer 2

MDanihy Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 20, 2011 12:24 PM in response to MDanihy

Another update, just tried in in a MacBook and it worked fine. Beginning to think the Air is somewhat useless with the new technologies, and it is only a couple months old. Shame...

Reply

Answer 3

Nov 20, 2011 1:14 PM in response to MDanihy

This issue with Toshiba external drives has been brought up a few times here in this forum. It seems that it is always related to the power required for these particular drives. I wouldn't blame the MBA, as it seems that some Toshiba drives are really power hungry.

To use on the MBA, you need Toshiba's "Y-adapter" to span the power across two USB ports.

Reply

Answer 4

MDanihy Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 20, 2011 2:43 PM in response to SP Forsythe

Seems funny that a MacBook can supply enough power but a MacBook Air cannot. It can supply enough power to burn using the Apple external DVD drive but not this little hard drive? I find that suspicious.

Reply

Answer 5

MDanihy Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 20, 2011 4:45 PM in response to MDanihy

Additional information, in case anyone has a clue, the iMac and MacBook that it does work on were upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion. The MBA was bought with Lion preinstalled so I don't know if a proper driver is missing from Lion that was available in Snow Leopard.

Reply

Answer 6

MDanihy Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 20, 2011 5:10 PM in response to MDanihy

Update:

From System Information. Required power is 500mA, and I do believe the MBA can do 1000mA for the SuperDrive, so I doubt power is the issue. This information is available for a little while until the system gives up with "The IOUSBFamily was not able to enumerate a device."

Product ID: 0xa006

Vendor ID: 0x0480 (Toshiba America Info. Systems, Inc.)

Version: 0.01

Serial Number: 2011100620790

Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec

Manufacturer: Toshiba

Location ID: 0xfd120000 / 4

Current Available (mA): 500

Current Required (mA): 500

Reply

Answer 7

sumeet75

Level 1

0 points

Nov 26, 2011 1:31 AM in response to MDanihy

I bought a Toshiba Canvio 1.0 TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive (HDTC610XK3B1) yesterday. I see a similar issue here:

1) Doesn't work with my MacBook Pro 17" (MacBookPro8,3) running Lion (10.7.2). I get the same error (26/11/11 1:00:16.000 AM kernel: USBF: 796.586 [0xffffff800c21a800] The IOUSBFamily was not able to enumerate a device.)

2) The drive works fine on an iMac and has been formatted as exFat on the iMac.

Both the MacBook Pro and iMac have been upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion.

Any help is much appreciated.

Reply

Answer 8

MDanihy Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 26, 2011 5:19 AM in response to sumeet75

I was working on mine again last night. My drive only works on Macs that were upgraded, I checked versions of the IUSBFamily.kext and saw differences. I am comparing them now. I am also going to swap the cable and see if that makes a difference.

Reply

Answer 9

Nov 28, 2011 11:30 AM in response to MDanihy

Hello everyone (first post ever),

I have a similar problem. I bought a Toshiva Canvio 3.0 1Tb NTFS. My new MacBook Pro i7 doesn't recognised it. I use it in Windows and it worked well. I tried in an older MacBook Pro with SnowLeopard and it was recognised. Therefore, I use the utility disk of that computer to reformat it with HFS+. Then I connected it again with my computer and nothing happened. I tried in a computer similar to mine, and it didn't work also. I think the problem is within Lion.

Any idea will be great.

Reply

Answer 10

colebg

Level 1

0 points

Nov 28, 2011 1:25 PM in response to rodrigomd

I have the exact same situation. Same drive, works great in Windows and a MBP running Snow Leopard but not in my new 13" i5 MBP running Lion or my white MB running Lion.

Reply

Answer 11

llmm

Level 1

0 points

Nov 30, 2011 10:42 AM in response to colebg

I also ran into the very same problem with a Toshiba Canvio 1TB USB3.0/2.0 drive. It works fine on a MacBook (late 2008) under Snow Leopard, but is not recognized on a MacBook Air (Mid-2011) under Lion. I have filed a bug report with Apple; I hope other people will do the same so that this might get fixed in the future.

Reply

Answer 12

Art

Level 1

115 points

Nov 30, 2011 2:29 PM in response to llmm

Having the exact same problem with a Toshiba Canvio Basics 1TB on a Mid-2011 Mac Mini with Lion.

Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1TB drives on the same machine work fine.

Reply

Answer 13

Art

Level 1

115 points

Dec 1, 2011 3:53 PM in response to MDanihy

Another thread about this issue:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3526534

Reply

Answer 14

Dec 1, 2011 10:36 PM in response to MDanihy

I have the same problem with a toshiba canvio drive. Yet again I'm searching the internet for 3 hours to figure out why something doesn't work on my mac when it works just fine on my windows pc and work linux pc. This is utter, utter BS

Reply

Answer 15

zeitlerd

Level 1

4 points

Dec 2, 2011 6:03 AM in response to MDanihy

I have a similar issue, but the Toshiba Canvio 1tb drive works fine on my MacBook Pro running lion, but not on my new MacBook Air. Another external drive with external power worked fine on the MacBook Air. An I bought the big external drive specifically for use with the MacBook Air. Crap!

Reply