Issues with USB-A connections when linking multiple external drives in various ports!
Issues with USB-A connections when linking multiple external drives in various ports!
I noticed an issue where connecting an external hard drive to the USB-A port causes the first drive to disconnect briefly before reconnecting. Have you seen this on your machines as well? Is this typical behavior? You have a Zepyrus G14 with a Rizen 9 and an RX6800.
The drives use significant power during startup, often exceeding the capacity of a single USB port (0.5v x 0.9a = 4.5w). Certain motherboards include a resettable fuse or protection system that activates when more than 2–2.5A flows through two ports simultaneously. This means the running drive combined with its spinning drive might surpass the limit, triggering a reset of the USB ports.
The issue might stem from incompatible ports between the devices.
there is a 2.5" Toshiba 4TB USB 3.2 Canvio Ready and a WD Elements 1TB drive, but i always get the same results when testing other external hard drives. could it be that the connection ports are faulty? they use different ports, yet after disconnecting and reconnecting they still stay connected.
It seems this might not be the right setup. Using a standard USB-C port instead of an external 3.5" dock could affect performance. If you have any free USB-C ports, you might try connecting an external HDD there—though the cables would likely need to be different, and power delivery behavior could vary.
Motherboard USB connections work together as a unit, not separately. You’ll notice distinct controllers handling various speeds. To fix issues, switch drives to different controllers or skip USB-powered ones altogether, since they draw large startup and write currents. Most 2.5" drives have higher current limits than USB 3, which is surprising given the bundled nature of USB ports—each controller can exceed USB 3 ratings unless both drives share the same power path.