USB 3.0 Drives Unmounting - Could it be Mobo temperature??

[stev0]

Hey all:

Like many HTPC owners, I have crammed my case with hard drives and still need more bays, so I have resorted to the Mediasonic Probox HF2-SU3S2 (4 bay USB3.0/eSATA enclosure). I used USB3.0 to connect them. It worked well for some time, but the drives inside the enclosure began to unmount after a few minutes, even while I was watching TV (very frustrating!). I checked all USB 3.0 and power management settings, even used a utility which wrote data to the drives every minute in a futile attempt to see if they'd stay mounted. I was befuddled.

Last week, I encountered an issue where entitlement of all but OTA channels ceased to function. After calls to Comcast, repushes of CC pairing, and a service ticket to Ceton, I got a note from Ceton that stated that the internal temperature of the tuners had reached 97 degrees Celsius! After opening the case, I concluded that a 120mm case fan had stopped because it was jammed with cat hair! After clearing the hair, an waiting for an hour or two, everything was back to normal (and performance seemed better-than-ever).

In spite of the temperature issue, I turned the enclosure back on Saturday afternoon. I checked the HTPC again Sunday morning, and everything stayed mounted! Empircally, I can deduce that temperature might have caused the external drives to unmount, but this doesn't really make sense, does it? Could the temperature have affected the Mobo's USB3.0 controllers as well, or am I just lucky?

Thanks,

Stev0

[tomtoth]

Hi,
I didn't have USB 3.0 unmounting, but I did have PCI-E cards "dissapear/unmount" due to heat issues with the cetons. Added directed air cooling and heat sinks and haven't had any disspearing devices since.

[mcewinter]

Anybody having USB 3.0 issues should also keep their eye on BIOS updates as it's a new implementation in a general sense.