cannot read large files from usb flash drive
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| linux-meta (Ubuntu) |
Invalid
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
Binary package hint: linux-image-2.6-386
Plug in a USB 2.0 flash drive (in this case it was a LEXAR 240 MB stick). Copy a large, say 200 MB file to the stick from the hard drive. Now try to access the file either by opening the file with an executable or trying to copy the file back to another location on the hard drive. Sometimes the first time you try, this will succeed. On the second and subsequent attempts to read from the flash drive it will fail....I believe you are allowed one read for each reboot and then it will fail...sorry I got a little bit lazy in my testing here. The behavior is that the read from flash will start, maybe reading the first few megabytes. Then it will hang for about 2 minutes, finally fail, and the flash drive will then get automatically and non-gracefully unmounted. Note that writes to flash are always successful.
This is on Ubuntu Gutsy with all the latest updates. The Linux kernel version is linux-image-
You can work around the problem by removing USB 2.0 capability by doing a "rmmod ehci_hcd" and reverting the system behavior to USB 1.0. (with subsequent severe performance penalty).
(Please read the whole paragraph before you assume its a hardware problem!) Interestingly the machine this occurs on is a dual boot machine. When I did a clean boot of Windows 2000 (that is NOT virtualized), then the same behavior had occurred in Windows. By downloading and installing the latest USB 2.0 driver from Biostar (who I assume got them from NVIDIA), the problem was resolved under Windows. It appears that the Linux driver also needs to be updated to handle this hardware.
For this reason, it possibly appears to be a USB 2.0 driver (ehci_hcd) problem (possibly specific to this relatively new chip set) which is why I filed it under Linux Image.
| solongoblong (solongoblong) wrote | #1 |
| sctrn (scitrin) wrote | #2 |
| Changed in linux-meta: | |
| status: | New → Invalid |
I am also having a similar problem. When I copy large files (like distro isos) to my USB hard drive, they copy successfully, but do not show up in the file system if I plug the hard drive into another computer. Also, they are not there when I plug it back into the gutsy desktop. I have the same chipset as mentioned above. I also do believe it is not a hardware error as I use this hard drive at work all day on a windows desktop and everything I copy to it is there when I get home. The hard drive is a western digital usb 2.0 traveler? model. It is a laptop hard drive inside that pulls all of its power from the USB port. Hope this helps.