Horrible problem with external (USB) harddrive

[LieMfB]

I recently bought a new 250 GB external USB-connected harddrive for my Linux system (Slackware 10.2). My computer is pretty old and only came with USB 1.1 ports. But the harddrive worked fine -- I managed to format, mount and use it.

Then I bought a USB 2.0 PCI card and the dang thing don't work anymore... But thing is, my camera and mp3 player works splendidly with it. They mount with no problem.

The harddrive is still detected by the system when I connect it and power up:

Nov  9 23:15:32 Mule kernel: hub.c: new USB device 00:04.2-1, assigned address 2
Nov  9 23:15:36 Mule kernel: Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
Nov  9 23:15:36 Mule kernel: usb.c: registered new driver usb-storage

But when attempting to mount it, it fails miserably:

Nov  9 23:16:37 Mule kernel: scsi: device set offline - not ready or command retry failed after bus reset: host 1 channel 0 id 0 lun 0

And, after repeated attempts:

Nov  9 23:56:57 Mule kernel: sdb: Unit Not Ready, sense:
Nov  9 23:56:57 Mule kernel:  sdb: I/O error: dev 08:10, sector 0

The last message looks scary and makes me think there's a real problem with the actual drive.

I've tried different ways of mounting, all kinds of device names, all USB sockets including the old integrated 1.1 ones, plus fdisk, fsck, powering up and down and over under sideways down... Nothing works. No physical symptoms on the hd, except possibly that the LED doesn't flicker as much as I'd want it to.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

[LieMfB]

Ok, I just found out that the harddrive seems to work fine, and it actually works in the 1.1-socket, but still not through the USB/PCI card. The camera and mp3 player still work like a breeze in either one of them. So I'm beginning to think that there's a problem with the high speed mode, since the harddrive obviously works in regular (USB 1.1 / 12Mbps) speed, and the other two units probably don't do high speed anyway (and thus works in 12 Mbps through the USB/PCI card).

Any ideas? Please!

[LieMfB]

Ok, I just tried a new Linux kernel ... 2.6.18, and it worked a bit better, but still way far from successful:

Nov 10 13:17:09 Mule kernel: usb 4-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Nov 10 13:17:10 Mule kernel: usb 4-4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Nov 10 13:17:10 Mule kernel: Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
Nov 10 13:17:10 Mule kernel: scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Nov 10 13:17:10 Mule kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage
Nov 10 13:17:10 Mule kernel: USB Mass Storage support registered.
Nov 10 13:17:15 Mule kernel:   Vendor: SAMSUNG   Model: SP2514N           Rev: VF10
Nov 10 13:17:15 Mule kernel:   Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 00
Nov 10 13:17:15 Mule kernel: SCSI device sda: 488397168 512-byte hdwr sectors (250059 MB)
Nov 10 13:17:15 Mule kernel: sda: Write Protect is off

...Which seems fine. But then:

Nov 10 13:17:15 Mule kernel:  sda:<6>usb 4-4: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Nov 10 13:17:16 Mule kernel: usb 4-4: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Nov 10 13:17:17 Mule last message repeated 4 times
Nov 10 13:17:18 Mule kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x00070000
Nov 10 13:17:18 Mule kernel: usb 4-4: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Nov 10 13:17:19 Mule last message repeated 5 times
Nov 10 13:17:20 Mule kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x00070000
Nov 10 13:17:20 Mule kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda

...And I still can't mount the dang thing.