USB Storage issue

I have a weird issue with my SSK external NVME enclosure. Amazon.com: SSK Aluminum M.2 NVME SATA SSD Enclosure Adapter, USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) to NVME PCI-E SATA M-Key/(B+M) Key Solid State Drive External Enclosure Support UASP Trim for NVME/SATA SSDs 2242/2260/2280 : Electronics

Unlike my SanDisk USB 3.2 drive, this enclosure can’t be detected on port 6 USB-A module. As mentioned, I have no issues connecting to this port with any other storage, only this drive. I have to use Port 5 instead to get it to be detected at all. Then when I boot to this device (because I use this external drive for booting), I constantly have I/O errors and hangs. I didn’t have this issue on my previous laptop (XPS 9710) but that was 11th gen intel. Not sure if this is an AMD issue or what and how to resolve.

Does anyone else have some weird issues like this?

Did you already try swapping a different USB A module in that slot to try it? Checked the drive for issues? Are you using latest firmware for both the framework and the drive? I had issues with a USB-C4 Dock (module slot 1) that were fixed by upgrading firmware on the dock.

Ports 3 and 6 will not supply enough power for a NVMe device. Those ports only provide 900mA (4.5w at 5V).

4 Likes

If you test the speed, the “USB 3.2” Sandisk drive doesn’t actually have USB 3.2 speed, the actual speed is actually between 2.0 to 3.0, or even worse, below 2.0. The NVME SSD enclosure has real 3.2 speed and the speed is often capped by the SSD, especially if said SSD hasn’t been TRIMmed for a long time. The port 6 module does not support the power of such USB 3.2 SSD device as it can only deliver 4.5W

I have not tried swapping modules since all seem to be working as expected. Drive has no issues, reformatted as well, works fine on my other computer. Framework has latest firmware, just reflashed firmware for the drive but it was already version before that.

Interesting, I used USBTreeView and it reported that regardless of port 5 or port 6, the sandisk is only calling for 896mA of power, and the SSK is also asking for only that power amount on port 5 as well, although refuses to work on port 6. So either the software is wrong, or the devices are lying about how much power they require?

What’s pretty funny, the SanDisk same speed I usually get out of port 5 or port 6. However I just tested again and this time I got some I/O timeout at max speed from port 6, where my single test of port 5 resulted in no timeout. The thing that is confusing is regardless of port 5 or port 6, the device is reporting to USBTreeView that the demanded current is 896mA.

omg I wish I knew this sooner. I spent so much time troubleshooting my drives and enclosures.

Another issue I am having is when booting from this SSK NVME drive on USB-A or USB-C (so far tested on ports 2 via USB-C and 5 via USB-A), I keep getting I/O lockup (100% utilization but no read/write, locked at 0/0 for read and write metrics and the disk queue grows exponentially) for that device when it hits max speeds. I am wondering if that could be a power delivery issue or something else. Don’t see this issue on my other computer so it’s just weird. Maybe the Framework firmware isn’t negotiating the correct amount of power to the device?

That info about the USB ports power is new.

Previously the page did not mention power.

1 Like

I’ve been on that page a bunch of times and don’t recall having seen that on there before. So that seems about right to me.

You could test the actual speed by copying large files from your laptop to your USB device, and watch the speed there, a 500MB/s speed is about USB3.0(5Gbps). Does the SSD with enclosure faster than the SanDisk?

The USB ports on the FW16 are a little buggy and have compatibility problems.
A) Port 1, 4
B) Port 2, 5
C) Port 3, 6
A, B, C each have a different make/model of USB chip driving them.
So, if you have a compatibility problem in C, try A or B instead.

I have found Port 1, 4 to be the most compatible with devices, so I hang NVME enclosures off port 1,4.
I put thinks like USB headphones in port 3, 6.
I put power brick input in port 2, 4.

Yes, sorry I didn’t post screenshot. I did speed test with crystaldiskmark and got 900mbps on both devices. SanDisk on port 6 and 5. SSK enclosure on port 5.

Yeah I have my dock on port 1, power on 2, headphones on 3. However I made the mistake of not ordering more than 2 USB-C I guess since I only have USB-A and HDMI on my right side 4-6 ports. I guess I need to order 2x USB-C ports and eliminate the HDMI on port 4 for USB-C instead, USB-C on 5 instead of type-a. Kinda annoying but is what it is

900Mbps is between USB2.0 and USB3.0. Do the speeds change when using port 1 & 2?

Oh sorry, typo! ~900MBps on read, ~1000MBps on writes, not mbps. doing the math of 900x8 = 7200mbps or 7.2gbps. Doing the write speed math of 1000x8 = 8000mbps or 8gbps. So the speeds are surpassing USB 3.0 (USB 5gbps) and are in the realm of USB 3.2 (10gbps) regardless of port 5 or 6. Speeds did not change when using port 5 on USB-A or port 2 on USB-C, have not tried port 1 or 2 but let me give that a shot now.

Yep, same speeds on port 2 with a USB-C interface, so nothing going wrong with SanDisk, it’s getting it’s max speeds on ports 4/5/6, but then the SSK enclosure won’t be recognized on port 6.
image

Just tested again on port 6 so I could get a screenshot of the SanDisk external. Only ran the SEQ1M to save time though.
image


That’s my power draw when using an SSD enclosure regardless of port used. However my write speed is 400~500MB/s (USB3.0) because the SSD is SATA not NVMe as I don’t have a spare NVMe SSD to test so idk whether the power draw will double (exceed the 900mA) when using a faster SSD

1 Like