MacBook Pro and USB 2.0

After having the issues with my previous laptop (and working for a storage company), I decided to get a USB 2.0 external hard drive to (regularly) backup all of my data. I chose a Maxtor USB 2.0 drive and it seemed to work fine for a few days, but I quickly ran into some issues. The MacBook Pro wouldn’t even mount the drive. I thought it was just the drive, so I went to the local CompUSA and bought a USB 2.0 enclosure and a Samsung 300GB drive. I had the exact same problem. When I did a ‘cat /var/log/system.log’, I could see various messages similar to this one:

May 16 23:16:14 XXX kernel[0]: USBF: 12462. 59 AppleUSBEHCI[0x36e2000]::DoIOTransfer - error 0xe000404f queueing request

I have filed a bug with Apple (#4550783) and they are currently investigating the ‘ioreg -l -w0′ output. If I switch and use a Firewire compatible enclosure, everything works great. Has anyone else had problems with this? I’ve heard this has been an ongoing issue, not anything specific to the MacBook Pro.

11 Responses to “MacBook Pro and USB 2.0”

  1. george Says:

    I see the same error with a MacBookPro but using the Apple USB modem. It drops the connection after about 2 minutes with the same error. Looks like there is something wrong with the USB subsystem.

  2. megan Says:

    I’m having the same problem with an external drive I use. It’s an Archos Multimedia Jukebox and it used to work just fine. But now it won’t even mount.

    The dmesg output:
    disk1s1: I/O error.
    USBF: 469.936 AppleUSBOHCI[0x1512800]::CreateGeneralTransfer - trying to queue to a stalled pipe
    USBF: 469.936 AppleUSBOHCI[0x1512800]::DoIOTransfer - error 0xe000404f queueing request

  3. jbctech Says:

    I’m still working with them on the bug. They’ve given me some files to load and try, but it appears they’re for 10.4.6. I’m in the process of trying to get new ones for 10.4.7….hopefully they can get this resolved quickly.

  4. Steven Says:

    I’m having the same probably with a USB enclosure from CompUSA and a 250GB Maxtor, using them on a Macbook Pro. This enclosure has card readers and usb ports on the front, so I really don’t want to replace it. I’m going to try it on an iMac G5 at work today. Let me know if they get it working for you.

  5. jbctech Says:

    I’ve been tied up for the last few weeks — they’ve asked me to try it on 10.4.7. Hopefully I’ll get to it this weekend…I’d like to see them fix this and get it into future revisions of the OS.

  6. Alban Hertroys Says:

    I have the same errors with my USB-2 hub (sweex) that connects my mouse and keyboard to my mac-mini (G4). This seems to indicate that the problem is not restricted to USB hard drives.

  7. jbctech Says:

    Yeah, I would definitely suspect it’s not restricted to USB hard drives as it seems like it’s the complete USB subsystem altogether.

  8. Steve Says:

    I have the same issue with a recently-installed USB 2.0 PCI card in my MDD dual G4 1.25GHz. I’m running 10.4.8.

    My 5G iPod mounted and seemed to sync with iTunes, but iTunes was *very* hung (’kill -9 pid’ didn’t even work). The rest of the machine was fine. This has happened twice now.

    Same error:

    USBF: 5716.877 AppleUSBUHCI[0x2dd6000]::DoIOTransfer - error 0xe000404f queueing request

    The iPod sync works fine - though slowly - with the native USB (1.x) ports on the machine.

    And everything is reported fine in System Profiler:USB High-Speed Bus:

    Host Controller Location: Expansion Slot
    Host Controller Driver: AppleUSBEHCI
    PCI Device ID: 0×3104
    PCI Revision ID: 0×0063
    PCI Vendor ID: 0×1106
    Bus Number: 0×54

    iPod:

    Version: 0.02
    Bus Power (mA): 500
    Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
    Manufacturer: Apple
    Product ID: 0×1209
    Serial Number: 000A270015EF862C
    Vendor ID: 0×05ac (Apple Computer, Inc.)

    With hope, your bug is addressed soon.

  9. jbctech Says:

    The bug is still in the OPEN state — bug id #4550783. I’ve given them the information they needed before 10.4.7…judging by the pre-10.4.9 notes, it’ll probably just be pushed out to 10.5….

  10. Olof Says:

    Hi,

    nothing new with the 10.4.9 version ??? I have the same problem with an external USB drive and I have the same problem with 10.4.8.

  11. jbctech Says:

    Nope - I actually moved to using Firewire for what I needed to do, but it doesn’t appear to be resolved yet. I’d bet it’ll just be punted to 10.5 — to me, it’s a very serious USB issue that needs to be resolved.

Leave a Reply