USB 3 stopped working

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TShirt Author

Level 1

0 points

USB 3 stopped working

Hi all,

I'm hitting a problem that I'm not able to fix; hope to find here an expert that can help me.

I have a PNY USB 3 flash drive (256 GB) that is not recognized as USB 3 on some of my machines.

I tested them on:

- my new iMac Retina 5K (OSX 10.10.1)

- my 17" MBP Late 2011 (OSX 10.7.5)

- my 13" MBA Late 2010 (OSX 10.10.1)

The USB worked until yesterday when I accidentally disconnected it without a safe ejection.

Something odd is happening!

If directly connected:

- it IS NOT recognized by my iMac and my MBP

- it IS recognized by my MBA

If connected through a USB 2 hub (with 4 USBs):

- it IS recognized by all my machines

I tried a lot of fixes:

- reboots

- reformatting

- reset pram

- reset smc

- ...

but nothing helped. Any idea on what's going on here?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Posted on Dec 26, 2014 4:59 AM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

684,117 points

Dec 26, 2014 12:28 PM in response to TShirt

FireWire/USB - Quick Assist

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Answer 2

TShirt Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 26, 2014 12:50 PM in response to Eric Root

Already tried all this stuff but no luck.

Any other ideas?

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Answer 3

tbirdvet

Level 6

13,809 points

Dec 26, 2014 2:06 PM in response to TShirt

Is your MBA a USB2 or USB3? Looks like the issue is having it recognized as a USB3 drive. If that is the case I suppose it is possible that the drive itself has some failure that has defaulted to USB2 speed only.

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Answer 4

TShirt Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 26, 2014 2:15 PM in response to tbirdvet

USB2.

How can I investigate/confirm your guess?

It happens also to a second flash drive of the same type. 2 out of 2? Am I so unlucky?

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Answer 5

tbirdvet

Level 6

13,809 points

Dec 26, 2014 3:07 PM in response to TShirt

For some additional info. with the USB3 drive attached go to about this mac and system report. Look at the USB and see if it shows USB super speed bus (that would be USB3 speeds). Under that should show your USB flash drive if it is being recognized correctly.

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Answer 6

TShirt Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 26, 2014 4:10 PM in response to tbirdvet

I see this on all the 3 systems.

USB Hi-Speed Bus:

Host Controller Location: Built-in USB

Host Controller Driver: AppleUSBEHCI

PCI Device ID: 0x0d9d

PCI Revision ID: 0x00a2

PCI Vendor ID: 0x10de

Bus Number: 0x26

USB 3.0 FD:

Product ID: 0xfa05

Vendor ID: 0x154b (PNY Technologies Inc.)

Version: 10.75

Serial Number: 30407013

Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec

Manufacturer: PNY Technologies

Location ID: 0x26200000 / 3

Current Available (mA): 500

Current Required (mA): 500

Capacity: 256 GB (255,999,344,640 bytes)

Removable Media: Yes

Detachable Drive: Yes

BSD Name: disk1

Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)

S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported

Volumes:

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