Thinkpads Forum

Hello, I got a strange problem with my WD My Passport Ultra.
It works fine on the left powered USB port and on the right non powered USB but if I plug it into the left normal USB it doesn't get detected. It doesn't show up in device manager even.

The USB port on the left works fine if I plug anything else in it (powered USB hub and android phone)

So far I tried to show hidden devices and disconnected devices and uninstalled everything from the device manager but without success.
Is there anything I can do to troubleshoot this?

Thank you

What is the color of the "normal" port? Has your WD worked in it before?

They are all the same colour black with ss logo usb 3.0. I cant recall it ever working on that port.

3.0 ports should be blue. Perhaps that port does not push enough power to run that drive. How do other devices work in it?

T450's are relatively new. If your machine is still on warranty, I suggest contacting Lenovo.

They all carry the SS logo and all should be usb 3.0 as far as I know. I think the new USB ports or by Lenovo design they are black now.
When I plug in the powered USB hub and try to connect my WD harddisk nothing happens.. same thing for 2 different WD harddisks...
Mouse, android phone, usb drive all work fine..

Did a little research. You have USB 3.1 Super Speed (SS). Should all be the same power output but I'm not certain of this.

http://www.usb.org/developers/ssusb

Did you contact Lenovo? Does your documentation describe if there is anything different about the ports?

Yes this is what I thought as well.. all got the same power output..
Haven't contacted Lenovo yet as I like to figure things out by myself and those conversations on the helpdesk take alot of time.

I tried to connect the WD harddisks through the powered USB hub that works fine and still no detection of the harddisks.. so it can't be a power issue I think?

Are you using an SS cable?

Yes all original SS cables that came with the Hub and with the drives..

Nobody has a clue what I can do to trouble shoot this?

I put my external soundcard on it now and it's working fine...

I had this issue on my other laptops. I believe this not specifically a problem for lenovo.
So I used to run win7 on my Asus G73SW. I found couple times, one usb port cant detect my WD external, while the other one couldnt detect my Seagate external HDD. But if I switch them, both will work just fine. Especially after you mentioned about you did plug the sound usb and its working fine.
I do believe is some kind of has memory table on the windows. I never figured how to fix this. I switched to linux on that machine. Never come to this problem anymore since then.

Could give a try by running a linux live disk, then plugged your hdd on it, see if its detected or not.
OS like ubuntu for example. It will straight mount ur partition so you can see it, if its working.

lembang wrote:Could give a try by running a linux live disk, then plugged your hdd on it, see if its detected or not.
OS like ubuntu for example. It will straight mount ur partition so you can see it, if its working.

I second that recomendation.

I now have one USB port that seems not working at all on a laptop running windows 8.1, although it is working fine in linux.

I will check if I can get a linux live CD running.

I have a suspicion it has something to do with a previous installation of VMware in combination with a driver problem.

Just today I put my laptop out of hibernation and low and behold both HD's where not detected through my hub connected to the port that was always working fine.
I tried disconnecting the hub, taking the power of and on. Reconnecting the drives but they both didn't show up.
When I just connected 1 of them I noticed in the device manager it was looping the refreshment. Also the harddisk didn't power up good I think.
The hub is a powered Transcend usb 3.0 hub and both where working fine before.

Now if I just connected 1 of either drives directly into the USB of my laptop they worked without problem.

After some fiddling around I decided to put the hub on another USB port the last one I hardly use and boom everything worked fine.
Now I disconnected and put them back to the previous port to see what happened and that worked fine again!
I'm really puzzled by this now..

Could it be this shot in the dark: is Intel AMT enabled in BIOS?
If so, disable it and try again.