Getting external USB 3.0 drives recognized

[swechsler]

Hey all, I've just built a Debian server as part of Open Media Vault (I asked this question on their forum as well, but since this is more OS related, I thought i'd get a better response here) on a Dell optiplex 9020 with 8GB of RAM and two internal SATA drives: a 120GB SSD for OS and a 500GB hard drive for data. In addition I'd like to connect an external 2TB USB 3.0 drive for media storage. The drive works fine on a Windows machine running on the same hardware. But on the Debian machine, the drive is not recognized unless I connect it to a USB 2.0 port. Is any sort of driver required to support the USB 3.0 drive? Or something else I need to configure? Help.

Uname output:

Linux mediaserver 4.14.0-0.bpo.3-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.14.13-1~bpo9+1 (2018-01-14) x86_64 GNU/Linux

[GarryRicketson]

I don't really know, but when I do a search , it looks like this is something that is common,
On Debian, Is any sort of driver required to support the USB 3.0 drive?
If nothing else, these 2 hits should give you some ideas about checking ,and troubleshooting this:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/729558/how-do-i-get-usb-3-0-driver-working-or-check-that-it-is-already-working/729565
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https://itsfoss.com/find-usb-3-port-linux/

[bw123]

I don't use it, guessing it is another debian-based os?
When you say not recognized, you mean absolutely nothing shows up in dmesg when plugging it in?

Did you try any of these?
https://duckduckgo.com/html/?q=Open+Med ... recognized

[RU55EL]

What is the output of lspci?

My notebook computer, for example, has a SD card reader that requires non-free firmware. I don't use the SD card reader, so I haven't installed any non-free firmware. (In fact, I replaced the Wifi card with one that doesn't require non-free firmware, so that I don't need to use any non-free firmware.) But, if I run lspci at the command line, this is one of the lines that I get regarding the SD card reader.

Code: Select all

03:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8411 PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01)

I am assuming that "Unassigned class" is due to the fact that there is no firmware for the device. I would think you should see something similar for USB 3. Then you can look for the required firmware.

In my case searching for "Debian RTL8411" comes up with https://packages.debian.org/stretch/firmware-realtek

[reinob]

Hey all, I've just built a Debian server as part of Open Media Vault (I asked this question on their forum as well, but since this is more OS related, I thought i'd get a better response here) on a Dell optiplex 9020 with 8GB of RAM and two internal SATA drives: a 120GB SSD for OS and a 500GB hard drive for data. In addition I'd like to connect an external 2TB USB 3.0 drive for media storage. The drive works fine on a Windows machine running on the same hardware. But on the Debian machine, the drive is not recognized unless I connect it to a USB 2.0 port. Is any sort of driver required to support the USB 3.0 drive? Or something else I need to configure? Help.

Uname output:

Linux mediaserver 4.14.0-0.bpo.3-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.14.13-1~bpo9+1 (2018-01-14) x86_64 GNU/Linux

As suggested above, you should first check what gets logged when you plug your USB drive, both with "dmesg" as well as with "journalctl", to make sure you (and we) don't miss anything.

I have a self-made NAS with Debian (buster/testing) which works perfectly fine with USB 3. My old laptop (with sid) has also no problems with USB 3. I think any kernel from the last 5 years or so should have no problem with it. The hardware might be the (your) problem though, but you say Windows works fine..