USB3.0 adapter in Z1

Hi guys

I recently bought a big'n'fast USB3.0 stick. At first I just used it in USB2 speed, but then I bought a USB3.0 adapter to be able to max it, but without much luck.

The adapter is a Renesas (which is actually NEC hw it seems) USB3.0 expresscard adapter (single port). I've tried a few different drivers, but each time I try to copy files from the stick to HDD, it flies for 10-20 seconds and then the copying just hangs. I haven't tried copying files *to* the stick via USB3.0 yet, seems like begging for trouble until the reading works better.

It's the only USB3.0 device I have so I can't rule out the stick, but it works flawlessly in USB2.0 speed. I also haven't tried any other (USB2.0) device with it, I guess I'll do that later.

Anyway, has anyone had any luck with a USB3.0 card in a Z1?

 

Are you sure its not just simply your hdd copying data to the buffer and once its filled it gets emptied slowly onto your memory stick?

Your SSDs can shuffle data into the buffer faster than the stick can empty it.

Btw can you run external HHDs using just the power from the USB3.0 adapter?

 

I'm not at all familiar with the big'n'fast USB3.0 stick, but this AKE USB3 ExpressCard works perfectly for me, and is probably the most popular one used by Z1 owners on NBR. This thread will give you more info, but the AKE fits almost flush in the Z1's EC slot, sticking out perhaps 1/8" which is less than any of the others I've tried or heard about. It also gets all the power it needs from the pcie whereas several other USB3 ECs I've tried needed auxiliary power from a usb2 port or an AC adapter. Also note that pyr0, who kinda pioneered this and started the thread I linked above, modified the drivers that come with the AKE because he found they didn't work out of the box. You'll find his modified Fresco drivers on that thread and in his sig. Finally, for what it's worth, I have an IOGear EC USB3 2-port hub that uses the NEC drivers and it works, but it only does so with it's supplied AC adapter plugged in.

If you want to make short work of getting reliable USB3 connectivity from your Z1, you can't go wrong with the AKE.

 

DarkReaper10: Actually, I was copying the other way *from* the stick *to* the SSD, and some of the files (actually ~2GB) did end up on the SSD, so it works for a few seconds.

I just tried an old USB2 (or perhaps it's a USB1) stick and it's the same. It works for a few seconds and then hangs.

But a USB WD HDD doesn't get enough power, it tries to spin up but clicks after a while and starts over. So it definitely doesn't get enough juice.

I did find some newer firmware for the card somewhere, but I'm not certain it's exactly the correct chip in my card. But I guess I'll try it now. Can't work much worse than it does now.

Thanks for the suggestions. If I can't get this working, I'll try to find an AKE. Couldn't find it here in Sweden.

 

McMagnus Try the drivers from SilverStone Technology Co., Ltd.. Same Renesas chipset

Select Accessories and the EC02.

Works a treat for me! Hope it helps.

 

Thanks! But no go for me.

Interesting info though. Can you check which firmware you have? I have the 3028 from station-drivers, but I think I already had that from the start. Made no difference when I installed it anyway.

I had tried 2-3 different drivers before, but not the exact version from the Silverstone site. Same behaviour though, when I copy a directory larger than a few hundred MB, it will always stall after 1-10 seconds.

I'll probably consider my card as DOA and try to find a Silverstone card.

 

Sorry but I can't find any firmware information. (Checked driver info tab, am I doing something wrong?)

However I couldn't find a AKE card either, but found the Sillverstone card from a UK supplier. Scan Computers. Part number LN40616.

Hope it helps.

C.

 

I found the fw info in the Utility app installed with the Renesas driver. You might find it in the Renesas submenu. No big deal if you don't.

 

Doh!

Didn't think of that.

Heres the info from the application.


Renesas Electronics

USB 3.0 Host Controler

Driver version 2.0.34.0

Firmware version 4015

 

If all else fails, I would like to help you obtain the AKE card. I can order a few of them from Amazon, many other US suppliers and put them up for sale on NBR Marketplace. Can you use Paypal outside the US? Any other web-based payment system?

Note: not doing this to make money - just hate to see you having to do such tortured software/firmware exercises because you can't get a $15 USB3 EC! Let me know.

 

Don't forget the Startech one, lovelaptops, where is that post i made about it?
And it's alot easier to get it...

check my post before making a decision... and it includes the little power adapter so a usb 3.0 hdd can be powered on the slot with up to 850 mA.

 

Thanks everyone. I saw XTACTIC's post too late to change my mind, I've already ordered a Silverstone card. However, it seems to include the power adapter you said the Startech card had.

And also, I think the names AKE and Startech might be US names for more or less the same cards. They don't pop up when I look for USB3 expresscards here in Sweden anyway, but my problem is probably the old fw I have in my card (3.x), and it seems the 4.x fw is only for newer hw.

 

Sorry about that, but check the post in my sig if you already havent..
I don't think AKE and Startech is the same company though... although I know that kind of practice is a common thing in the cheap sectors... like Vantec is Syba and so on. But anyway..... the ake and startech is two different chipsets as pointed out, the startech is renesas.

check the post for any infos.

 

Didn't find your post but found the card - if it's the two-port one. I have a two-port version by Iogear which looks the same and uses the same NEC driver - hence your label-switching at work. Excellent, but needs the AC power to drive any usb3 external drive I've tried.

Hope it all works out.

 

Is this Amazon.com: Express Card Expresscard to USB 3.0 2 Port Adapter: Electronics
the same as the one lovelaptops mentioned but cheaper and with 2 ports?

 

I just bought that one from Amazon last week but I can't get it working on my system. I used pyr0's drivers, but my USB 3.0 HDD won't recognize on Windows, but I do hear the disk spinning.
Everything works fine if I plug into a USB 2 port.

 

Well, given that it has two ports, I really can't call it "the same" as mine. Particularly due to Generic's bad results (below).

Not surprising. I found all 2-port USB3 EC hubs required auxiliary power (usually available via provided AC adaptor) to run just one external USB3 HDD - and yes, the disk was spinning and the light was lit, but more power was needed to get it to function as a Windows drive. Don't know why that would be, even when you are only using one of the two ports, but none of the 2-ports worked without additional power. The single port AKE with pyr0's drivers worked "first time, every time" on each of three different USB3 Ext drives for me, numerous others as reported in the other Express Card eSATA thread in the Sony forum.

The only way I could use any 2-port hub without aux. plug-in power - but for one drive only - was to use a Y-connector USB cable and add power from one of the USB2 ports to the power supplied through the PCIE Express Card bus, for some reason needed only when the card had two ports. You might be able to power two USB3 devices by having a "helper" USB2 ports combine with each USB3, all on the left side of the Z1, but pretty sloppy, as is the need to have a wall-socket powered hub. Do you have a great need for a simultaneous 2-port USB3 solution? If not, save yourself more headaches and get the single port AKE and download pyr0's drivers. Very satisfying.

EDIT: Just had a thought: is it possible that you can't use pyr0's drivers with the two-port card and that perhaps the drivers supplied with it will work? Certainly worth a try if you haven't. There were posts in the other thread from users who bought the AKE (1-port) more recently who said the stock drivers were working fine

 

I've got that 2 port card.. Seems that I need to play it safe and put the computer into standby before plugging anything.

For my card, the drivers and firmware here seem to work but don't make it any better.

 

Whoops I made a mistake. I didn't buy the two port one. I really bought the one port one and couldn't get it working with pyr0's drivers.

http://www.amazon.com/Expresscard-Express-34mm-Power-Cable/dp/B0046Y3INC

But I found some other drivers online and it works fine now.

To be honest I didn't even realize there's a two port one. Just yesterday when I put that express card in my computer I was thinking to my self that they should make it as a two port. haha well now I see it doesn't really work that well.

 

What kind of speeds do you get with the AKE expresscard?

 

Is there a program I can run to test it or do I just base it on Window's estimate when transferring something?

 

@lovelaptops. No it's a 1-port flush-mount card, with a tiny dc-in type power connecter, the other end of which goes into any available usb port to supply the power. Please see the post in my sig, which i think you already saw anyway.

@mets3214 -check the post in my sig, it's just as good as the ake, but the limit is my external drive for testing.. so it does atleast 90 MB/s


@everyone wondering, just go here to the post:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...ow-up-usb-3-0-expresscard-z1.html#post8066718

It's more expensive than the AKE by a good margin as well, but I think it's a better buy anyway, because it's way more sturdier than the ake, just look at the face of it.. The AKE i had problems of loose-connections.. and as everyone who have the ake would tell you, you have to crimp the end for it to even fit in the vaio z in the first place, which the startech just simply worked right off the bat, and the drivers is on startech's website. no need to mouse dig for the right drivers. So yes, i'd rather spend the money on the startech anyday.

 

Do you have to provide power to it with the dc-in connector or does it just work in the ec slot?

 

If the device you're using needs less than 300 mA of power then you Don't need to put the extra power jack. But if you need more than 300 mA (and up to 800 mA) of power, then you need to put the power jack. So this typical excludes usb flash drives, but usb hard drives will need the power jack.
Ofcourse that saying just goes for plugging devices directly into the card, but if you are plugging this expresscard into a powered usb 3.0 hub, then you don't need to boost power with the dc-in because the hub will be supplying the power.

 

A Silverstone EC02 just arrived, works perfectly out of the box. It had the 4015 fw just like Carlos'. Thanks all!

 

Just a few quick questions, where did you get one from, I've found them hard to find in europe. (Just the one supplier I mentioned to you.)

And whats the transfer rate like? I've only got a 16GB usb pen drive at the moment, but looking at a 500GB USB3 portable drive.

C.

 

It depends largely on the external drive you are using. I get average 75mb/s with burst to 100 using an Iomega Prestige 1.0 TB, USB3 and a Seagate FreeAgent 1.0 TB USB3.

EDIT: It's very hard to get OEMs to provide drive speed in these external drives and it may be that the portables that need auxiliary power are 7200 rpm and the others 5400.

You can use any of the most common: HD Tune, CrystalDiskMark, ATTO, AS. Don't get me started, but those tests will return wildly different stats for what seems to be the same parameters on the same HDD/SSD. If you are doing comparisons, it doesn't matter which you use, as they have been validated to provide consistent comparisons between drives - eg, if HD Tune shows average seq. access time to be 80mb/s on one drive and 60mb/s on another AS should show the latter to be 25% slower than the former. CDM seems to remain the most popularly cited - theory: most compelling [I didn't say "useful"] result graphics!) despite being widely know as the least consistent. Since you buy this once, and depend on it for a year or more, it's worth it to spend time up front and test it and at least one alternate on 2-3 of the benchmark programs and choose the fastest, provided it has consistent results across at least 2 different benchmarks.

A better way? For just a little extra time and effort, you can buy a "bare drive" - a standard 2.5" HDD, such as you would install inside a notebook computer - and a case to house it (there is an avalanche of options, just check customer reviews at Amazon or Newegg), you can pick the best/fastest/ most reliable drive and choose a case that makes it easy to swap drives in and out and change output format (USB3/3/eSATA). The cost should be comparable (bare drive costs less than std portable enclosed drive, case is an added cost because you only need it with the bare drive.). This gives you the opportunity to spec a 7200rpm drive whereas close to 100% of the enclosed portable drives have 5400 drives. Further, you can't normally find out who makes the drive inside the case or, even if you buy an encased drive from and HDD OEM, you can't find out the actual drive of that OEM that is used, simply that it is made by, eg, Seagate. Seagate makes some of the cheapest, slowest and least reliable HDDs used in budget laptops but they also have the Momentous line, which are among the best HHDs sold, especially the Seagate Momentous XT, which has a small caching SSD to speed routine reads up. One last point: if you buy an encased portable drive (ie, in a case you can't open without breaking it), be sure to get one that connects to the drive with a standard/non-proprietary USB cable. Some of the portables connect via a non-standard plug/jack (including the Iomega I linked above for reference, but I would not recommend it for this reason). The only reason to avoid the proprietary interfaces is that if you lose or damage yours, you have to get a replacement from the mfr and that could be costly (the ONLY reason they use the non-standard interface!) and, should you need it immediately, you will not be able to find one at a Best Buy, and will have to order it from the OEM and wait for shipment.

Whew! Didn't think it was so complicated! Funny, though, by trying to make things too simple, the enclosed portable HDD makers force you to take "pot luck" and hope they put the same drive inside the one you buy as they did inside the ones that were inside the boxes reviewers bought from Amazon or Newegg.

Yes, that's true. But anything which ties you to a wall jack for power is by definition, not useful on the road. I think a good way to go is to have the powered USB3 hub/dock on the desktop + something like the AKE or Silverstone by itself for USB3 connectivity with 300 mA of power on the road. You can usually tease enough extra juice out of a second USB port in a Y-cable to run the HDD w/o AC-based power.

"YMMV" goes in spades with this application, but with the single port AKE USB3 port I have yet to find an external "portable" HDD that is NOT sufficiently powered by the the USB port in the Z1 or the PCIE-supplied ExpressCard line - and I've tried the card on several other EC-equipped laptops (and from reports, same goes for the Sliverstone, if it can power a portable USB3 on the 300mA that XTACTIC reports is available from the Z's EC/PCIE slot). Experience varies as to drivers, but pYro's drivers for the AKE card (Fresco) have proven reliable for many - see my results above and his thread for more.

External (non-"portable") HDDs termed "desktop" external drives by definition will generally always have their own jack for plugging in an AC adapter directly into the drive case - and if working properly do not require any additional power. I'm guessing you need a plug-in drive to get maximum 7200 rpm speeds. For most people who keep a lot of media files, it's become pretty common to own a 2-4TB desktop-type drive and case - even a desktop size (3.5") drive, since they are faster and higher capacity, as a main back-up and for a shared storage device (for local shared use or, if configured as a NAS, your own personal "cloud" storage) and for storage needed on the road, use a small, light 2.5" HDD as described, ad nauseum, above.

Wow again! So much to say. I'm sorry if I told many of you things you all know more about than I do, but some of the questions showed advanced knowledge and some seemed more intermediate so I figured if I wrote about everything in the world I know about the subject it would be helpful to at least some of the people who view this thread. Please advise me of errors so I can correct the post. It may not reach "sticky" status, but while pYro's thread from 2010 is the "gold standard" on the subject, this one may serve to update and augment the knowledge in that thread.

 

So I dont need the external power for anything but my external usb 3 HDD right? I think I'll buy the startech one

 

By the way, i'm having that issue where my external hdd (Seagate Freeagent GoFlex USB 3.0 1TB) isn't being detected on any external usb hubs once it's plugged into the expresscard port (ake or startech).... But it works if i swap out the expresscard port for a native usb 2.0 port. For some reason, it doesn't want to show up when plugged into a HUB over ExpressCard.

Here's what works and what doesnt.

WORKS-
EC --------> USB 3.0 HDD
NativeUSB2 --------> USB 3.0 HDD
NativeUSB2 ---------> ANY HUB (3.0 OR 2.0) ---> USB 3.0 HDD

DOESN'T WORK:
EC -------> HUB -------> USB 3.0 HDD

Everything else plugged in works, but not the USB 3.0 HDD.

Does the firmware for that external drive need updating??
It's obviously getting enough power also, so that's not the reason. It starts up and spins but doesn't show up in windows and doesn't mount..

I'm somehow having a expresscard to usb3.0 hub issue with this drive =(

 

Can't swear they all will, but haven't heard of a single portable drive not working, provided you use the right drivers, pyr0's for the AKE; ask others for the Silverstone. The EC/USB3 card should power anything made to run on USB power alone. Anything that doesn't require external power of it's own to run the HDD. I haven't tested: AKE->USB3 desktop HDD without plugging in the HDD, but I think that would be true for USB2 as well.

FWIW, you're not alone. I've yet to see a USB3 hub running off any

 

A lot more testing today. I bought it from CDData in Sweden, CD-Data / SILVERSTONE Singel port PCI-express card f Laptop USB 3.0 not sure if they ship abroad though.

Not sure I can say much about performance, my guess is that the USB stick I have is the bottleneck. It's a Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 G2 64GB and according to specs it should read 100MB/s and write 70MB/s.

I'm pretty disappointed with the 4k and 512k write performance, such steep drops looks strange. I tried a bunch of different drivers but saw no improvement.

I can also report that I was unable to connect a mechanical drive. I attached the extra DC cord but it was unable to spin up the HDD. It's a WD 3200BMV, only USB2 so I didn't expect much speed, but nonetheless I think it should connect.

 

McMagnus

I have a Corsair flash voyager GT and get about 68 Mb write 90 Mb read. When I connect my USB2.0 HDD to the card, I have to use the power adaptor, but I can access the disk fine. Are you plugging the power adaptor directly into the express card or are you supplying the external drive with power?

 

My external disk doesn't have an external power connector, so it has to get power via USB. So I attach the extra power connector from a USB2 port to the Silverstone card but it doesn't work. Either, the power isn't enough (which I doubt since it's a quite small disk and it works fine in the USB2 ports), or I got another bad card.

I've also tried disabling the USB3 power mgnt functions to no avail.

 

Two faulty cards from diffrent suppliers? Mine worked straiht out of the box, I think you should run some diagnostics on the express card port interface.

 

Ditto. ^ Either the EC port or the WD drive.

On another note, I think your USB stick performance is rather impressive, all things considered. Not that far off from the claimed rates, which are always exaggerated. Amittedly, the 4k write speeds are no better than a spinning drive. I think such devices are best for writing big files - eg, a movie - and reading them in pieces, eg, streaming. Out of curiosity, how much did the Kingston cost?

 

i dont understand? you mean no usb 3.0 hub's recognize external usb3.0 drives when plugged into the EC 3/4 slot?

The hub is self-powered so it's receiving power, it just won't show up. I Think I got this to work once or twice, but for some reason it doesn't want to work again, but that might have been a dream. not really sure about that...

Who do you think i should contact? Seagate, Startech or Sony? Or all of them? $$$

 

Answer to first: Precisely. I've never been able to get to a USB3 disk at the other end of the hub via the Z1 EC34 card. Never tried a non-powered device just to see if it can at least find device ids. Might be a revealing first step, point the way to what's next. Have you tried more than one hub?

Answer to second: pyr0. For some reason he has not weighed in on this thread, but he is the resident expert on, well, most things Z1 but especially EC/HDD related things. I'd PM him. Tell him I said he needs redemption for the 16GB RAM wimp-out - he'll laugh if you tell him I told you to say that. Good luck; keep testing, keep posting.

 

McMagnus

Also Check what power is really comming out of the USB2 port. If found that the two ports next to the EC 3/4 card don't work with my 16GB HP usb2 stick, but the stick works fine in all other machines and in the usb port on the right hand side of my Z13.

I'm waiting till summer before I sent my Z in for repair to check if this is a real fault.

C.

 

Yes, I realize it's a bit far fetched that both cards are faulty, my guess is some incompatibility issue with the WD drive in a USB3 port, cause it works fine in USB2 ports. I tried drawing power from all 3 USB2 ports on my Z1 (Z11Z9E to be exact), I even tried a USB charger in a wall socket with no difference.

When I insert the WD drive, it lights up, tries to spin up but fails and is never recognized. At this point, the USB3 card is dead and doesn't recognize the USB3 stick until I remove/reinsert the card, then it works normally again.

I tried the USB diagnostic in Vaio Care without problems, but there's no test for the expresscard interface. Let me know if you had some other in mind.

I probably won't have a problem with the current state of the card though. It works for the stick I aimed to use it for. The WD drive wouldn't be faster in a USB3 port and I don't plan to buy mechanical USB3 drives as I have 2 Qnap NAS:es for storage and backup.

Lovelaptops:
Don't remember what I paid for the USB stick, but the current list price where I found it is ~980 SEK ($144)

 

Well, other than the random write speeds, the performance is pretty good, considering it's the size of a stick and the price/performance is about $1/GB. Hate to touch upon a sore subject for some - the EC34 slot - but have you looked into EC flash drives? They have been pretty expensive in the past, but you eliminate a bandwidth-reducing interface - PCIe to USB3 - so you may get better results. That may improve the random write speeds over your USB3 stick. You may also want to try a different brand of USB3 stick flash memory. If this exercise has taught us nothing, it's that each device adds complications and, potentially, bottlenecks.

Has anyone done any research on this? Maybe we're trying to re-invent a wheel here?

 

Purchased a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Express Card adapter almost 2 weeks ago to use with a Z570N. Using the USB 3.0 port I have transferred data back and forth between a eSATA HHD and a USB 2.0 jump drive. The only issue I have had so far is when plugging in a USB device; the adapter occasionally unlatches. To resolve this problem I hold the adapter in place until the USB device is seated.

 

No, hadn't thought of that. But I think such a drive doesn't really fit my purpose. I'm not after "more storage for my Z", I'm more after faster access to external storage, and in this particular case it happens to be a USB stick. I want to be able to move data to other computers. If I wanted more storage in my Z, I'd probably exchange the OD for a large SSD.

Also, the expresscard SSD niche seems a bit cold, or perhaps i didn't dig enough.

 

I get it; makes perfect sense all around. It would be nice to have an EC flash drive to use as "external" storage, just slide it in any time you would connect your USB HDD and slide it out when you would disconnect the HDD. Benefit of course is much, much faster access speed like an internal SSD yet portable and removeable. Big issue is price, of course, since the few EC SSDs around cost more/GB than standard form or mSATA SSDs.

I think you're right that the segment is cold; fewer and fewer notebooks are including them and mfrs don't produce for a small an declining segment. It's a shame, I think, because the EC is the one and only true expansion slot you can have in a notebook - other than mSATA, which is also not likely to have cards other than storage made for them. Where a desktop has many, many expansion slots, it seems only reasonable that a laptop would have at least one. EC sound cards are so much better than USB because there is so much less latency, none due to the interface, really none additional caused by the bus since it's linked directly to the Mobo. Even the snooty, less-is-more designers of the MBP 17 (and, until the last refresh, the MBP 15) saw fit to include and EC slot.

 

Hey, yeah i've tried 2 hubs so far..

http://www.amazon.com/Syba-SY-HUB20062-SuperSpeed-Backward-Compatible/dp/B004IEALCQ/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1327432259&sr=8-4

Amazon.com: J-Tech Digital SuperSpeed USB 3.0 4-Port Hub Backward Compatible with USB 2.0 with USB 3.0 Cable: Electronics


None of which wants to show usb3.0 disk on usb3.0 hub on ec34...