Has anyone gotten the USB 3.0 Western Digital My Passport Essential SE (750GB, SN WX91A802881, firmware 1.008) drive working under Windows XP Pro SP3 using a desktop computer with a PCI Express USB 3.0 card? When this HDD is connected to a ST Lab PCIe x1 USB 3.0 (model U-510 with Renesas driver 2.0.30.0 and firmware 3027, auxiliary power plug connected to power supply), the HDD oscillates between being found and not found to an extent that nothing can be read or written to the Hard Drive. Note that this same USB 3.0 card and associated cable has no problems connecting to and reading/writing to the following USB 3.0 devices:
(a) COMKIA 2.5 inch USB3 enclosure containing a 2.5 inch Hitachi NTFS formatted 160GB SATA 7200 RPM HDD
(b) 500GB Fat32 or NTFS formatted ADATA USB 3.0 NOBILITY NH01 external 2.5 inch 5400RPM HDD
The Western Digital drive connects and read/writes through USB 2.0 with no problems at all.
Anyone have any thoughts as to why the USB 3.0 Win XP connection to this HDD behaves this way? I indicate Win XP problems because a quick check on a laptop running Windows 7 and a USB 3.0 Express card from the same company appears to function OK. I wish to maintain the Win XP on the desk top so I’m not considering a move to another OS on it.
Thanks for the thought. Unfortunately as far as I can determine the latest Renesas driver is v2.0.32.0 and using it instead of the v2.0.30.0 gives the exact same results with the WD drive. The 3 other USB 3.0 connections mentioned continue to work fine under the latest driver. There appears to be something about the WD interface that is incompatible with the Win XP setup I am using. Perhaps a future WD HDD firmware update will fix the problem or some one may know of a different driver that could work. Looks like I’ll just have to forego USB 3.0 connection with this drive at the moment.
Have you got SES driver installed on Win XP? Because all the WD Passport devices need driver for the SCSI communication device in addition to native USB interface. You can download and install SES Driver from here while the drive connected to USB2 port where you have no issue.
Do your other working USB3 External drives equipped with onboard data security? If not PCIe card’s Win XP driver may have incompatibility issue with WD Passport and or Passport itself not getting required power through PCIe port.
Try using a “Y” cable in between and connect power only USB plug to a USB2 port.
Keep us updated. Please provide Model # of your drive as well as of your PCIe card.
Mabikay – SLK
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I think the real problem is that XP is obsolete and USB 3.0 released last year. There probably is a backward compatibility problem in either the card or WD driver.
I finally was able to find a USB 3.0 Y-cable (Male “A” converted to micro-B with adapter). Connecting the USB 2.0 end to a USB 2 port and the USB 3.0 end to the Western Digital drive gave the same results as described previously; i.e.; oscillation of connection/disconnection of the WD drive. Note that from the beginning the WD SES driver has been resident for connection to the Western Digital My Passport Essential SE (WDBACX7500ABK-00) under Windows XP Pro SP3. Making the same cable connections to a STLabs USB 3.0 ExpressCard in a laptop running Windows 7 Pro works with no problems as was found before. Since three other USB 3.0 drives work with the STLabs USB 3.0 PCIe card on the same computer under Windows XP Pro, I can only conclude that the Western Digital drive has an interface problem with XP.
