Odd USB probing issues with USB disk drives

[Kevin Oberman]

I have run into a really odd issue with my USB hard drive (SimpleTech
box w/ Fujitsu 160 GB drive).

If I have the drive connected at boot, it is fine. If I plug it in after
the initial USB probe, it connects at full speed. At 12Mbps, it is
pretty useless. It can take a couple of minutes just to mount.

If I disconnect it (either after dismounting or before mounting in the
first place) and then re-connect it, the drive is probed correctly as
high speed and it is actually useful. Further disconnect/re-connect
operations always seem to probe it a high speed. Only the first time the
drive is plugged in after booting seems to fail to connect at high
speed.

Here is my usbconfig with the drive probed correctly.
ugen0.1: <UHCI root HUB Intel> at usbus0, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=FULL (12Mbps) pwr=ON
ugen1.1: <UHCI root HUB Intel> at usbus1, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=FULL (12Mbps) pwr=ON
ugen2.1: <UHCI root HUB Intel> at usbus2, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=FULL (12Mbps) pwr=ON
ugen3.1: <UHCI root HUB Intel> at usbus3, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=FULL (12Mbps) pwr=ON
ugen4.1: <EHCI root HUB Intel> at usbus4, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=ON
ugen4.2: <product 0x4482 vendor 0x04b3> at usbus4, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=SAVE
ugen4.4: <SimpleTech SimpleDrive PS> at usbus4, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=ON
ugen2.2: <Biometric Coprocessor STMicroelectronics> at usbus2, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=FULL (12Mbps) pwr=ON

If it probes as full speed, it is almost the same except that it is:
ugen1.2: <SimpleTech SimpleDrive PS> at usbus1, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=FULL (12Mbps) pwr=ON
System is 8-Stable i386 uniprocessor and I have been seeing this since
v8 went into the release cycle.

It's just an annoyance now that I realize what is going on, but I would
like to see if anyone else has seen this and if there is any explanation.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634
Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4  EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751