Re: Sluggish USB External Hard Drive

tb wrote:
> On 9/13/2021 at 2:10:58 PM tb wrote:
> 
>> I have a Microsoft Surface 2 laptop with Windows 10 Pro (64-bit)
>> installed.
>>
>> Every time that I insert my USB external hard drive (WD EasyStore),
>> the computer freezes for approx. 1-2 minutes.  It does the same thing
>> every time that I use a program that needs to acces the USB drive.
>>
>> For instance, when I plug in the WD drive, I have to wait 1-2 minutes
>> before I can access it with File Explorer.  If I then launch a backup
>> program to copy files from my c:\ drive to the USB drive, I have to
>> wait 1-2 minutes before I can press the icon that starts the backup.
>>
>> This does not happen with any other computer that I use.  (None of
>> them are Microsoft Surface!)
>>
>> What could be the reason that causes the Microsoft surface 2 to
>> freeze?
> 
> I think that I found what the problem is...
> 
> The laptop has only two USB ports and they are on the left side of the
> keyboard, adjacent to each other.  One port is used to plug in the WD
> EasyStore and the other one has an RF USB dongle for my Logitech mouse.
> 
> There seems to be some sort of interference between the two plugs or
> ports when both peripherals are plugged in.
> 
> Yesterday evening I removed the RF dongle and plugged in a corded USB
> mouse.  Everything seems to be working just fine now!
> 

Well, that's a weird one.

USB3 has a broad emissions peak, when the cable
is operational (something to talk, on either end
of the cable). The emissions peak for the 5GHz data
rate, is a broad peak at 2.5GHz.

Intel wrote a white paper on this issue, and showed
attempts in their lab, to establish better filtering
on things like disk drive cabinets. As a result,
not every drive enclosure emits as strong a signal.

This can interfere with 2.4GHz radio reception.
The 2.4GHz Wifi and 2.4GHz Bluetooth, they'd be candidates
for interaction. The 5GHz Wifi is supposed to be at
roughly a null, so the 5GHz should not "see" the effects
of the disk drive.

What would normally happen, is the Wifi device would
just be wiped out, and you'd report that, and we'd tell
you to move it away from the USB3 cable if possible.

It sounds like in your case, it was doing more than
that, and the Wifi was "receiving garbage" resulting
in a lot of USB3 packets. Perhaps from a protocol point
of view, the driver for the Wifi kept doing bus resets
to try to fix it.

That's just a guess.

Another case for the "warnings file"...

    Paul