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I have a Western Digital My Book 3.0 - 1 TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive, and I wanted to know if it would work on Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat.

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  • Ubuntu 10.10 will not boot via USB 3.0. I have yet to find a fix. See this thread.
    – Schlameel
    Jan 6, 2011 at 22:26
  • My USB3 thumb drive only gets detected as a USB2 device. I've got a bug report confirmed (Launchpad Bug #710153). Does anyone have an idea hot to get that fixed?
    – spi
    Jun 20, 2011 at 20:13

10 Answers 10

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Yes, Ubuntu supports USB 3.0.

Linux started supporting USB 3.0 in the September 2009 release of the 2.6.31 kernel, and Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala was the first version of Ubuntu to support USB 3.0.

In Ubuntu releases older than Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, there is a bug in the XHCI (USB 3.0) kernel module that prevents suspend: Bug #522998.

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apparently there is an issue : (522998)

When the XHCI module is loaded for USB 3.0 operation the system cannot suspend. Manually unloading XHCI will allow suspend to complete normally.

To avoid future suspend problems, the workaround is to add SUSPEND_MODULES="xhci-hcd" to /etc/pm/config.d/unload_module then the system can suspend normally.

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  • Thank you. I was wondering why suspending did not work on my new computer.
    – Caramdir
    Nov 8, 2010 at 22:54
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Yes, it will. Current kernel does support usb 3.0, so you should have no problems using your drive.

By the way, linux was the first os to have usb 3.0 support: http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/06/11/linux-is-first-os-to-support-usb-30

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It may be worthwhile to note that USB 3.0 boot is not supported yet.
Refer bug 565047.

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Yes it supports usb 3.0 see the link below,I have connected two via usb 2.0 it works perfectly.USB 3.0 is down complaint with 2.0.My USB ports are 2.0 but the HDD is 3.0 capable.

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/06/11/linux-is-first-os-to-support-usb-30

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I have Ubuntu 11.10 running in VMware Player 4.0, and after much searching, I found the following in the VMware release notes:

USB 3.0 support is available for Linux guests running kernel version 2.6.35 or later (Ubuntu 10.10) through a new virtual xHCI USB controller. To enable this feature, add the following line to the .vmx file: usb_xhci.present = “true”. Do not enable this feature for Windows guests. Because Windows does not currently have a generic xHCI driver, this feature will not work in Windows.

After adding this line to my .vmx file, the system now detects the USB 3.0 HDD I have plugged in.

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I believe the problem is hardware related and nothing to do with (k)ubuntu. I have a new PC with 2 USB3 ports setup to dual boot between Windoze 7 and Kubuntu 13.10. The ports worked fine under Windoze but not at all under Kubuntu.

Browsing the forums for a solution I came across the answer in a Linux Mint (Ubuntu derivative) forum. Apparently internal USB3 ports plugged into the motherboard 20 pin header will not be recognised by Linux.

The answer is to buy a PCI-E to USB 3 expansion card. I bought the Inateck Superspeed card from Amazon, plugged it into my motherboard's PCI-E expansion slot (MUST be a PCI-E slot, will not work with standard PCI) and on booting my PC Kubuntu recognised the ports and connected drives instantly. (Windoze had to wait until I installed the supplied driver).

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Apart from the posts above i need to also add that Linux is the first operating system to support USB 3.0 thanks to Intel's hacker Sarah Sharp. Which makes it one of the first steps that makes a small suggestion into how linux will be in the near future in comparison to other ..... "systems"

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It seems as though system looks for a USB 2.0 drive somewhere during the boot sequence, even if it started off form a USB 3.0 drive. This is what I did:

I have a Western Digital MyPassport (USB 3.0) drive and a HP Elitebook 8540W PC with 2 USB 3.0 ports and with 2 USB 2.0 ports. When I boot from a USB 2.0 port, everything is fine. WHen I boot from a USB 3.0 port, booting starts, but stops somewhere in the middle reporting an error (no live system found or something - I can send the specific code if desired)

So I created another bootable HD : Lacie 300GB (USB 2.0 and installed the same ubuntu version on it:Ubuntu 10.10 i386 (My PC is a 64 bit processor, but I use the bootable USB disks on other PC's as well)

Strange:

When I connect BOTH the Lacie to a USB 2.0 port AND the Western Digital to a USB 3.0 port AT THE SAME TIME and I boot the PC, I manage to start booting from USB 3.0 (via the Bios boot sequence of my PC) but I obtain the desktop of the system which is on the Lacie USB 2.0 drive. I used a different desktop background to be 100% sure for distinguishing both systems. Apart from the desktop, they are identical.

So I think somewhere during the boot sequence, the system looks for a drive that is connected to the USB 2.0 port and not the one that is connected to the USB 3.0 port even if it started booting from USB 3.0

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Had the same problem. This was an expantion card. After an hour of messing around I thought to look at the card inside again. and of course I forgot to plug the power cable to the card. Simple fix.

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