When is USB3 cable not a USB3 cable?

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My two portable USB3 hard drives each have their supplied USB3 cables. I found they are interchangeable and work seamlessly. But, both are short, 2 feet max. So, I ordered two 6ft cables to provide a little more convenience in placement. Each is standard A jack to standard micro B jack.
Neither of these cables work on both hard drives!!! When connected, the drives are totally unrecognized. Nothing can be seen or transferred. So, what gives? Are those cables supplied by the hard drive manufacturer special wired??? Are both new cables defective???
Michael

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We’d need to know exactly what cables you ordered (provide link pls) and exactly what external drives you currently have (link pls).
Some external drives have specialized cables, many others don’t.

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AS far as know USB 3 cables have more wires in them so they can be compatible with USB 2. But the device has to be compatible with USB 2 also. So not all USB2 cables will connect with a USB3 device even if connected to a USB3 port on your computer (Host). You can connect USB2 devices to your USB3 ports on your computer (Host).
Hope this is as clearer than mud.

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Most USB 3 only cables have blue plastic inserts.

32018-USB-Cables

I’m not talking the cable color, I’m talking that little plastic thing that prevents you from plugging in upside down.

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The 2 drives I ordered were purchased at separate times. 1^st was about year ago. It is Seagate Go Flex 1T. It is USB3/USB2 compatible. It uses a separate external 120 power module. It works fine.
The second I purchased recently. It is Toshiba 1T. It also is USB3/USB2 compatible. This is pocket size and gets it power from the USB connector at the computer. It also works fine.
I have transferred files Back and forth from both. Out of curiosity, I interchanged cables between Toshiba and Seagate. It makes no difference, they both work with either cable.
My computer currently only has USB2 ports. These drives plug in to the USB2 ports on the computer. They operate at USB2 speed currently.
I examined both the old cables and the new cables. The newer cables do in fact have the blue insert as do the older cables. Close examination with flashlight reveals all have the 9 pins required for USB3. They definitely are not USB2 cables, but they just don’t work!!! Well, at least they look like USB3 cables.

Here is the name of the cables.
Tripp Lite U326-006 USB 3.0 Super Speed 5Gbps A to Micro B Device Cable (6 Feet, Blue)

And here is the link to them on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-U326-006-Super-Device/dp/B003YNS0W0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348505911&sr=8-1&keywords=usb+3+cable

They do physically plug in, but they don’t work!!!
Michael

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I would contact the seller (Amazon often has other resellers plying their wares) or possibly Tripp-Lite and explain the situation. They do have the blue inserts.

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USB 3 has 5 more wires than USB 2, via extra contacts in the connector. Maybe your new connectors don’t quite align with your computer connector and you are getting mixed signals.

cheers, Paul

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Many of those micro device extention cables are known to be problematic, unfortunately there might not be too much you can do about it except to RMA
the new cables and try a different maker.

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Are you working with a desktop? A USB3 card is only $30 and includes 2 ports. Might cure the problem and speed things up considerably.

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I think your problem may be the length of the cables. With Ethernet cables length doesn’t matter (within bounds), but USB is a whole different ball game. The shorter the cable the better, and I think you may have exceeded the limit. Gold contacts help too.

If your desktop Seagate is plugged into a stand (as mine is), you might be interested to gently unplug it and look at the bottom of the drive portion. Mine has this arrangement, and on the bottom of the drive, obviously with mating connectors on the stand, I see a standard SATA configuration, which suggests that I could use it as an internal drive, assuming I have a bay to put it in. (I do, but confess I haven’t tried it.)

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Sorry to disagree dogberry, but any site I see that talks about USB 3 cable length states 3 meters, or about 10 ft. before degredation of signal. Unfortunately, there are no official specifications on this. I can’t imagine being limited to under 6 ft.

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There is a lot of complaints about the length of cable that can be used with USB3.

The specs fail to mention it but there’s a lot of info about it on the web, found this one which seems to make sense: http://www.everythingusb.com/superspeed-usb.html#cables_hubs

Seems we can have higher speed but only shorter distances.

Mike

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Sorry to disagree dogberry, but any site I see that talks about USB 3 cable length states 3 meters, or about 10 ft. before degredation of signal. Unfortunately, there are no official specifications on this. I can’t imagine being limited to under 6 ft.

Remember USB Y-cables? The OP specifies that both of his drives are portable, which is to say powered via the USB cable. Y-cables were designed to supply additional power to a remote drive, admittedly to deal with USB sources that weren’t able to run the drive. As another post pointed out, there are six more conductors in the works.

I did qualify my answer by saying that the problem ‘may be’ and that ‘I think you may have exceeded the limit’. I’ll stick to that until someone comes up with a definitive answer to the contrary.

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Hi Michael,
Another option may be to buy a Standard USB 3 Male to Female cable, and just extend the original cables. You could get just one to test first.

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Dogberry got me to thinking way back when USB 2 was coming out. I’d ordered in new brand name PC’s for the office, plus a couple of USB 2 hard drives for drive imaging. Mine worked fine, but our programmer’s would give a pop up message that his device would work faster on a USB 2 connection. All PC’s had USB 2 ports, front and back.
Even though all devices were using the same “standards” they didn’t work together. I imagine there will be a number of compatibility issues. Many new computers come with a mix of USB 2 and USB 3 connections (at least they did when I bought my last one) and it’s not to save money! USB 3.0 is taking a long time to roll out, likely due to issues like this one. I’d say Michael’s best bet is to get USB 3 ports for his PC or laptop, and get the speed that comes with them.

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I should have measured and counted before posting. My longest leads are less than four feet and they work perfectly.

I believe the OP said that his were portable drives, which I normally take to mean USB-powered, but it seems that one is powered, and that makes a lot of difference between the two drives. I feel I’m pushing my luck when I am supplying power for a drive motor via USB.

I have a laptop with one USB3 port and a desktop with two. I have two Seagate drives, one a 2T FreeAgent GoFlex Desk (powered) drive, which sounds like the drive the OP has, and a 500 GB FreeAgent Pro portable drive, with a stand or short lead. The short lead in that case is 17 inches, and the lead for the stand is about the same as the lead for the other Seagate, which is somewhat less than 4 feet. I have two more USB3 drives, which may interest any number of readers. These are enclosures, into which I put 3.5 inch SATA drives that I had available. The reason for the interest is that the enclosures, complete with power supplies and fans and cables, were thirty dollars each at Staples (or Business Depot), and you can install a drive in a very short time. RetailPlus is the brand, and the cable length is 3 feet. All of the cables listed have the blue strip in the connector, and all of the hardware works very well.

The only thing I can think of is that this product isn’t backward-compatible (which it should be).

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Here is a few of the options I am exploring. First let me state again that both portable drives work perfectly with manufacture supplied cables. Yes, one is powered externally and the other is powered through the USB. I use both drives for my desktop and my laptop for backups and image storage. Also just some long term storage of items I seldom use. Both computers have USB 2.0 only!!! No USB 3.0 ports.

The 6 foot USB 3.0 cables I purchased was only for convenient locating of drives when used. I was not expecting problems.

I also am looking into a PCI-e card that will give me 2 USB 3.0 ports. At least on the desktop. This is not a trivial matter. There is much that can go wrong without careful looking at these cards. First there is my HP desktop which is only 1 ½ years old. It is a compact chassis unit which requires a low profile bracket to mount any PCI-e to the chassis. Not all PCI-e cards supply this low profile bracket. Further, not all manufacturers will describe whether their card is a low profile bracket on NO!!! And then there are a few who will supply the low profile bracket in the package at no extra cost. Not paying attention to this could result in a card that just won’t fit your newer compact chassis.

Next is how the card will get its power. My HP computer uses the newer 15 pin SATA power connectors from the power supply. Most of those PCI-e cards I have seen require the older 4 pin power connector. Then there is the interesting detail of whether the manufacturer puts spare connectors in the chassis anyway. HP does NOT!!! Which means I need to buy some type of 15 pin Y power adapter to power the PCI-e. Hopefully, I will have all the details down, before ordering. As you can guess, I am looking into it. But, it’s not as simple as just ordering.

I am also looking into a selection of cables to have for experimenting.
Lastly, I am researching the length of USB cable vs performance. It looks like these hard drives are not designed to operate at the maximum USB 3.0 cable length specification, which is 10 feet.
Whew!!!
Michael

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P.S.: by the same cable, I mean the Tripp Lite U326-006 USB 3.0 Super Speed six-foot extension.

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IR
My sincerest thanks for your comments. I feel like I should thank everyone who contributed, but, your comments were most inspiring to weed out the mysterious problem I seem to experience.
I was ready to conclude that 5ft seem to be maximum for these devices. Based on my experience with my equipment, that seemed logical. Then your comment that you can go to 10ft caused me to look deeper.

My new cables arrived. I ordered two 1.5ft USB2’s, two 3ft USB2’s, two 1.5ft USB3’s, and two 3ft USB3’s. All cables were modern gold plated connectors. Seems like a lot, but, I had to get to the bottom of this mystery.

I will try to condense the testing results as best I can. Test #1, all 8 new cables worked perfectly in series with the manufacture supplied drive cable!!! Series stringing any combination of new cables to the specified 10ft limit, still resulted in perfect working transfers. Contrast this to the initial question of why I can’t go above 5 feet with my trusted older USB2 cables?

Digging deeper I found that the only two older USB2 cables that I had been using, caused the portable drive to fail. The older 3ft USB2 cable simply would not work at all when series to > 5ft length to drive!!! The shorter 2 ft older USB3 cable would only work properly if plugged in to a booted computer!!! If it was plugged in before the computer booted, it would mysteriously slow transfer speeds to 1MB. Somehow this doesn’t make sense for wires, but it was very repeatable.
I had handy another 3^rd older USB2 cable that was excluded from this experiment. This also proved to cause the newer drive to fail at mysterious lengths!!!

Using the newer cables, it does NOT matter when they are plugged in, nor does it matter how many are put in series to the 10 ft limit. All conditions with the new cables gives the correct transfer speed.

Summary
Older cables can cause mysterious things to happen at USB3 speeds. Having good new gold plated cables handy can prove valuable.
My mysterious problem is now resolved. I now can run any combination of cable up to the 10 foot spec. Thanks to all who offered comments.
Michael

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After some infuriating experiences with a new Windows 8 (expensive) machine, I can report that ONLY cables that are about 3.3 feet work for me.

This is with internal 2TB drives housed in external USB 3.0 enclosures.

Other cables connect and disconnect intermittently, or are not recognized at all, or connect only at USB 2.0 speeds, or work with only two of the three USB 3.0 ports on HP Envy dv7.

The advertised claims (‘Cables can be between three to five meters long’) are very valid, but only under the gravity of Jupiter. Here on Earth a different reality exists.

Does anyone get the impression that I am sick to my stomach of the manufacturers’ BS? I can’t imagine why. However, I was glad to read some of the above discussion; it is not just due to my personal bad luck, then.

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You need experts. The computer is a year-and-a-half old and didn’t come with USB3, and while it may be technically out of warranty HP may be scrambling for solutions even more eagerly than any of us individually. I suggest a polite inquiry might yield (free) information better than any of us can. HP pushes its support heavily, with automatic or semi-automatic driver updates, for example, and they may be the most reliable source of all. You have the very computer they most want to support updates/upgrades for, because it just missed USB3 and is just out of warranty. It’s hurting them more than it’s hurting you.

If that doesn’t work, you might consider letting a local repair facility fix it for you, because if they can’t fix it they won’t get paid, although they may have a flat fee for looking at it. Again, these are people who want to know how to fix the next machine as well as yours, and if they can fix yours they’re off to the races for the rest of them, and possibly ahead of the competition.

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I decided to run a simple test of cable length vs performance. For this test I copied a 1G folder, mostly photos from the desktop to the portable hard drive. The copying app was Win7 built in copy utility. I used a few cables I had on hand to get varying cable lengths.

These are cables I have on hand.
USB2 18”
USB2-Y 36”
Toshiba USB3 20”
Seagate USB3 48”

Following are the results of this simple test.
Toshiba Transfer 1G folder.
20” USB3 ~25MB/s, 43 seconds
20”USB3 + 18”USB2 ~25MB/s 43 seconds
48”USB3 ~25MB/s 43 seconds
20”USB3 + 36”USB2 ~314KB/s indicates will be about 20 minutes
48”USB3 + 18”USB2 Toshiba make muffled clicking sound, no drive available
20” + 36”Y 750KB/s indicates will be about 20 minutes bold means y powered.

Seagate Transfer 1G folder
20”USB3 44 seconds
20”USB3 + 18”USB2 44 seconds
48”USB3 45 seconds
20”USB3 + 36”USB2 44 seconds
48”USB3 + 18”USB2 not detected, no drive available

25*8=200 ~ ½ max speed for USB 2.(60MB/s is max for USB 2.0)

From this I conclude that extending the cable beyond 4FT introduces serious performance degradation. In fact, at 5ft, both drives stop working!!! The Toshiba which is internally powered seems to quit sooner. The Y powered cable improves a little, but nothing significant.

Therefore, I believe that those 6ft USB3 cables are good. The problem is: interfacing USB2 with USB3 portables seems to have a 4FT cable maximum length for proper performance. I suspect that USB3 data throughput speed will further reduce this cable length for good performance.

If some other members could verify similar results it would be encouraging.

Michael

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I have a NEAT desktop scanner that says to plug it into ONLY a USB port on the computer, not to a USB hub- and this is USB 2.0! I’ve heard of other users that have had problems with external HD’s plugged into USB 3.0 hubs getting only USB 2.0 speeds. So there DOES seem to be some distance and/or intermediate port issues with at least some USB 3.0 hardware. You may be facing such an issue- or it just may be that your cable is of poor quality. USB 3.0 speed is great, when you can get it, but the hardware-software still seems to be a “work in progress” with some glitches still present.

All I can suggest is to use what works. If your device works only with a short cable, then just use the workspace closest to your computer for these devices. Alternatively, try a different, brand-name, more-expensive USB 3.0 cable and see if that works. If you need more USB 3.0 connections than you have USB 3.0 ports on your computer, get a USB 3.0 hub that has the shortest-practical wire between it and your computer, and be sure that you buy a hub with its own AC power supply, and use it! Some devices still may not work with even such a hub, but you can switch your connections around until you find the ones that will function at USB 3.0 speeds on the hub, and plug the others directly into the computer..

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I have the same USB3 extension cable. Using 2G Seagate Expansion drive (externally powered) into a USB3 PCI Express 1x card, I tested it with HD tune and get a maximum 131MB/sec transfer speed whether using just the supplied 1M cable, or the supplied cable + the extension cable. So, the extension cable doesn’t seem to degrade the transfer on my system, at least when using a USB3 port.

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1R El
I find your post very interesting. Double check me on this to see if I am interpreting your comment properly. You have a 6Ft extension cable just like mine?? And you add that to a 3 ft cable? That is a total of 9FT??
Would like confirmation because your #’s are very interesting compared to mine.
Thanks in advance.
Michael

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Check your computer’s documentation to find out how many SATA 3 connections it has. Mine (a fairly high-end Acer Predator) has six, but only #1 is SATA 3. By the way, I asked both of your questions on Ask Metafilter and got soundly spanked. http://ask.metafilter.com/223199/SATA3-splitter

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Michael,

Yes, it is actually 1 inch less than 10 ft, because the cable that came with the drive is 47 inches long. The extension is the same cable you have.

I also tried the setup into a USB2 port, and it works fine (USB2 speed, of course – 29-33MB/sec).

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Quick question to Michael37713 (if you are still visiting this page):

I understand that the cables connected to your drives where short (less than 4 ft.), but you were able to extend them by means of gold-plated extension cables. I wonder if you’ve had a chance to test long cables (say, 6 ft. or longer) connected directly to the drives and the computer, without extensions.

This is the test that failed for me, as mentioned in my previous post.

If the cables you connected directly to the drives were the short ones, and only the extensions allowed you to go to a total length of 10 ft. or so, then that opens up a new direction of investigation for me.

Thanks for any information!

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Users with an extra machine have a possibility they may have overlooked.

We have long been able to transfer data between machines, even before USB. My old (Win 95 and subsequent) parallel-port LapLink connectors, and LapLink itself, are evidence of that. A crossover cable is another example. The workable distance for infrared (remember that?) was I think about a foot, and Ethernet developed through different speeds, requiring the hardware to match.

Home networking is easier than ever, and you can transfer data by wireless. You can even buy wireless-enabled external drives. If you have another wireless-enabled computer that you can use as a dedicated or temporary storage device, you might consider sending the data to that. From that you can transfer data to your slow external drives for storage, without caring how long it takes.

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Abir
Yes, some of the newer cables were 6ft. But they were new, meaning purchased recently specifically for USB3. 6ft was the longest of the ones I purchased. I purchased two six footers, two 4 footers and two 2footers.
The important point in solving this discrepancy for me, was to discover that the older long trusted USB2 cables were causing the failure. These older cables worked perfectly fine with USB2 drives. But they simply failed when added in series with the newer USB3 cables. I have no idea why. I am not a cable expert.
This test on my equipment was repeated 3 times to prove repeatability. It always is reproducible.
In my final test I was able to extend the cable to 10ft without any performance hits. But, I had to use all new cables. I series connected a 6ft with a 4ft.
The longest cable I used was 6ft.
My solution was to throw out all the long trusted older cables and replace all with newer ones. I have no problems on my computers now. 6ft is plenty for me. I like the USB3 powered drives from Toshiba. They are 1T, small and easy to use. I purchased a pair on black Friday at WalMart for $59 each.
I actually do have a USB3 card added to my computer which I use frequently. I average 125M on the USB3 card as compared to 25M on the USB2 ports.
Hope the information is helpful to some.
Michael

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Abir

The important point in solving this discrepancy for me, was to discover that the older long trusted USB2 cables were causing the failure. These older cables worked perfectly fine with USB2 drives. But they simply failed when added in series with the newer USB3 cables. I have no idea why. I am not a cable expert.
Michael

The reason is that USB3 cables have more wires than USB2. Pity you threw them out, though, when a simple tag would let you tell the difference at a glance and there is still so much USB2 stuff in use and will continue to be for years to come.

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The reason is that USB3 cables have more wires than USB2.

In the application where they failed I was using USB2 ports. Strangely those old cables worked fine up to 4 ft max. After 4 ft they started doing all kinds of strange things.
I never tried the USB2 cables on the USB3 ports.
The newer cables have no problems on either USB2 or USB3 ports.
Michael

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Another mystery I’ve encountered with USB 3.0 was that two four-port hubs, specifically marked with ‘USB 3.0,’ although recognized by the computer, transferred data only at USB 2.0 speed.

Specifically, when the drives are attached directly (with three-feet cables, not longer), they start at 115 mb/s, then complete a large transfer at 90 mb/s. At USB 2.0 speed, they transfer the file at about 30 mb/s.

I had to return both hubs (by Trendnet and U. S. Robotics). Interestingly, the person taking returns at Frys (in Los Angeles) was not surprised, and told me that they have seen a number of such problems.

I have a feeling that this problem doesn’t really belong in the current thread. I’ll try to start another one, dedicated to USB 3.0 hubs.

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Another mystery I’ve encountered with USB 3.0 was that two four-port hubs, specifically marked with ‘USB 3.0,’ although recognized by the computer, transferred data only at USB 2.0 speed.

Specifically, when the drives are attached directly (with three-feet cables, not longer), they start at 115 mb/s, then complete a large transfer at 90 mb/s. At USB 2.0 speed, they transfer the file at about 30 mb/s.

I had to return both hubs (by Trendnet and U. S. Robotics). Interestingly, the person taking returns at Frys (in Los Angeles) was not surprised, and told me that they have seen a number of such problems.

I have a feeling that this problem doesn’t really belong in the current thread. I’ll try to start another one, dedicated to USB 3.0 hubs.

I don’t think that’s much of a mystery at all. All such things are advertised as providing ‘as much as [factor] times USB2’, and any number of other such disclaimers. In other words, YMMV. In this case, you don’t even tell us whether the hub was powered or unpowered (at the time at which you attempted to transfer data).

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