Newly bought a WD My Book 3T USB3 external hdd. Connect to my laptop (dual boot Windows 7 and ubuntu 14.04), Repartitioned, reformatted, ntfs, ext4, etc. So far so good.
Connecting to my (OLD) server (running ubuntu 12.04), works fine. Re-partitioned with gparted to 3 ext4 partitions, reboot, the server does not recognize this drive, it also failed to connect with another USB HDD (also WD, but 1T, USB2). Tried several times, the pattern is, the server can recognize the new hdd only if the hdd is connected AFTER the server is fully booted. If the hdd is connected before boot time and reboot, then problem happens. Here is the end part of dmesg output:
[ 65.245823] usb 2-2: device descriptor read/all, error -110
[ 65.356089] usb 2-2: new full-speed USB device number 5 using uhci_hcd
[ 66.889045] init: plymouth-upstart-bridge main process ended, respawning
[ 66.957300] init: plymouth-upstart-bridge main process ended, respawning
[ 68.097979] init: plymouth-stop pre-start process (1973) terminated with status 1
[ 70.377611] usb 2-2: device descriptor read/8, error -110
[ 74.895253] usblp 2-1:1.0: usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer dev 2 if 0 alt 1 proto 2 vid 0x03F0 pid 0x1817
[ 74.898210] usbcore: registered new interface driver usblp
[ 75.497686] usb 2-2: device descriptor read/8, error -110
[ 75.712088] usb 2-2: new full-speed USB device number 6 using uhci_hcd
[ 80.734051] usb 2-2: device descriptor read/8, error -110
[ 80.967209] type=1400 audit(1427240917.079:66): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" profile="unconfined" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" pid=2438 comm="apparmor_parser"
[ 80.967231] type=1400 audit(1427240917.079:67): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" profile="unconfined" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=2438 comm="apparmor_parser"
[ 80.976951] type=1400 audit(1427240917.091:68): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" profile="unconfined" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=2438 comm="apparmor_parser"
[ 85.853376] usb 2-2: device descriptor read/8, error -110
[ 85.956179] hub 2-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 2
The most eye catching error is the device descriptor read/8, error -110. But I wasn't able find anything by googling. Anyway I can make the server boot with the hdd?