Macbook Air usb3 not working!

I can confirm problems with USB 3.0 drives and mid-2012 MBA. I have been using external bus-powered USB 2.0 drives with no problem, but an external (powered) LaCie 3T drive I received yesterday was recognized and formatted (2 MacOS Journaled partitions, 1 FAT32), worked for a day, and then suddenly dismounted both MacOS-formatted partitions and stopped recognizing them, but (oddly) would recognize the FAT32 partition on the same drive. Unplugging/powering down/replugging the drive doesn't help, and the MBA won't even recognize the MacOS partitions again - I had to completely reboot the MBA, at which point it did recognize the drive again, just long enough for me to transfer all the data I had off it, and then it had the same issue yet again.

I thought I just had a bad drive, but today I received a 1TB Transcend StoreJet USB 3.0 drive, and I am seeing the exact same issues (sudden dismount, warning message, drive partitions can't then be recognized or mounted, Verify/Repair fails, etc).

I've tried this with and without a powered USB 3.0 hub, so that's not the problem. Given the messages here, I'm beginning to suspect some sort of systematic USB 3.0 problem with at least some of the mid-2012 MBA.

The USB3 support on current macs is atrocious, AT BEST! I took my machine to the apple store to check it out, they tried their lacie 1tb rugged drive. It worked great. Then I gave them another drive, a newtech voyager q. No luck on my system or their test machine. Their answer...hmm, that's odd, I guess you'll have to wait for an update....

Great.

Tried another drive as well. No luck.

Tried a usb3 hub, it works with usb2 devices. Plugged in a usb3 card reader that works fine directly hooked up, and now that doesn't work either. I never had a single problem with usb2. Where is apple on this? You take away the mac pro, or at least don't give any real updates for years, so now for my desktop I am looking toward an iMac. Which means, I need fast external storage. Thunderbolt is still too expensive, and I have no confidence the usb3 drives will work properly. Update the firmware, update the os, whatever you need to do, make this work!

In any case, what I was planning to post is the follow-up that after my poor experiences with a mid-2012 MBA and USB 3.0 devices, I switched ports (the left USB port is now attached to the USB 3 hub and devices, and the right USB port is now attached to my USB 2 hub and devices), and so far, everything is working perfectly. I plan to run some stress-tests to see if this holds up.

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could anyone help me with a problem too? pleaseeeee 🙂 go to my profile and see it in my stuff... it's about if i can delete my files form the download folder which i have put them in other files too . but i don't want them deleted from the other files i want them deleted form the download folder. shall i delete them from the download folder or will they be deleted from the others too.... it's macbook air. thanks

You can add OWC Mercury Elite Pro mini USB 3 + eSata to the list of incompatible. I can't get the 2012 Air to recognize it either as a USB 3 or USB 2 drive. I plug it into my 2010 Air, 2008 Mac Pro, and they both recognize it and enables USB 2 mode. My Windows desktop recognizes it as a USB 3 device. I'm quite disappointed. I just got the Air today and was excited to see the speed as I transfer all my files to it, and the machine won't even see the device. System report in about this mac doesn't even show the device listed off of any USB nodes. I'm wondering if Apple will fix this problem for us or wait till the 2013 models to do so.

I'll be chatting with both OWC and Apple support tomorrow. I don't expect much, seeing how long and how many these threads are. The fact that OWC keeps advertising these enclosures for the new 2012 machine seems very seedy.

Yes, so far this is the only usb drive that has all functions on the MBA: LaCie 500GB Porsche Design P'9223 USB 3.0 portable drive. I have other usb 3.0 drives that are recognized and I can do some things with. But the LaCie is the only only that I can write to and boot from using usb 3.0

Yes, it is a power issue. So, in addition to the LaCie Porsche Design P'9223 USB 3.0 portable drive, the

Silicon Power Stream S20 Portable 1 TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive also works as a full fledged usb 3.0. However, cannot create a working bootable drive with this one. And most usb 3.0 flash drives will works because they do not require as much power.

How are you so sure it will not be fixed by an update? Has Apple stated this? It is possible to design circuits that output variable power, depending on firmware. Apple even did this with their iPad before with the camera connector.

Anyway, I have a WD My Passport USB 3 notebook drive, and it works flawlessly. I know some people are having problems with A version of the Passport, but my version is the 1TB "My Passport" notebook drive, and it works great. So, if anyone is looking for a drive that works, I can verify it works and runs at USB 3 speeds.

In my case (OWC enclosure), part of it may be a power issue but it's also a system software issue. The drive works on USB 2 Macs. If the Air cannot negotiate USB 3, it should switch to USB 2. It's not even doing that in my case. System Info shows the USB doesn't see anything connected. So the fact that it works in normal USB 2 and I tried connecting external power to the enclosure tells me it's not a power issue. I'm not going to rule anything out, but I think this is just bad firmware coding on Apple's part.

Wow - that's a pretty big deal, and it sounds like something unlikely to be fixable via firmware upgrade. And it's surprising, if so -- Apple should have had to certify its implementation with the USB Implementers Forum in order to use the term USB3.

Well, I'm still debugging this with Apple and OWC. However, I will say that even when I power this drive separately from the USB 3 port, the MBA still doesn't see it. So, we can be talking about two separate things. One is the power the port provides to power the drive. The other is the power put out by the I/O signaling pins. I don't know the USB specs so I am only assuming the power and data pins are separate. There is still a software issue. If it cannot start up in 3.0 mode, why doesn't it kick down to 2.0 mode? This is logical programming.

Well, maybe. Is the drive recognized when connected to a usb hub? My MBA so far only recognizes 2 usb 3.0 drives. One I can use even as a bootable drive, one I can just mount, read, & write. The other 3.0 drives are not recognized by the MBA unless it is connected to a 2.0 usb hub. It appears that the MBA will not kick it down to 2.0 on it's own and that may be a software problem?

It is recognized as a USB 2 device when connected to a powered USB 2 hub. I should have known not to trust Apple's first rev of a standard port. They can't seem to get industry standard ports right. It's like all those years of underperforming USB 2 ports in their power pc computers.

I have the mid-2012 Air.

It sees USB 3 drives.

It can write to and from USB 3 drives, nice and quick.

It cannot BOOT from a USB drive. I went and spent a bunch of sheckles on a superfast Lexar USB 3 stick, which I want to use as a rescue disk, and it won't boot. I can use the stick just fine, as long as I don't try to boot from it.

That means that I have to continue to use the unbearably slow Patriot stick, and I was a sucker for getting the Lexar.

The latest EFI update does not mention addressing this, and I don't have time to test it.

I have connected a Seagate 500 GB USB 3.0/2.0 and my MBA (mid 2012) reads it but when I try to write something on it (creating a new folder, copying/pasting files or folders) the message I get is always "not enough room" or "support is read-only".

Quite weird I'd say.