[SOLVED] Increase USB 3.0 ports available on my system

[KT888]

MB - Asrock Z87 OC Formula/ac
Windows 7 Ultimate From An Intel SSD
32GB DDR3 2133MHz RAM

So here's my issue.
I just installed a PCIe Card which gives me an additional 8 SATA Connectors in addition to the 10 supported by my MB.
2x3 Internal drive bays from 2x2 external 5.25" bays
A 6 bay SATA SSD bay from a single 5.25" bay
bumps my Cooler master Haf 932 to support 19 drives internally including all the SSDs supported by this nifty little converter.

I gave up my burner because who even uses a burner these days when flash drives have greater capacity than even BR discs
Now I can run 18 internal SATA Drives from my system which is pretty great. The only unanticipated piece is now for some reason my system is saying I've got too many devices attached to my USB ports and it refuses new connections.

Now my motherboard manual says that if I use the 4th PCIe slot for something (My new SATA card is in there now) 4 of my USB 3.0 slots drop to USB 2.0 speeds and those are the only ports that are working right now at all. The other 4 USB 3.0 ports at the back of my system are dead.
Don't know why.

I have a mirror sized USB 3.0 backup drive for each SATA drive. Right now I'm able to connect 8 of my backup drives simultaneously.

But isn't the limit supposed to be 127 devices daisy-chained together?

Why am I being limited to 12 USB devices? (8 External HDDs, Wireless Keyboard, Wireless Mouse, Wireless USB headset, and a USB fingerprint reader)

And that's for my entire board. regardless of which port I try to use my system is quite convinced it can't support any additional USB connections from any port out of 15 USB 2.0 & 3.0 ports on my system.

Any ideas why? And also suggestions to get by this restriction I've come across.

I'm using 3 USB 3.0 hubs. In theory I SHOULD be able to connect my 14 external USB3.0 drives no problem to the 18 ports offered by the 3 hubs.

But I can only get 8 drives connected simultaneously out of that.
If I connect another drive Windows gives me a message that

"You have exceeded the number of supported USB devices on the Intel USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller.
Please disconnect alternate USB device currently not being used or connect one of the devices to a different port.


Thanks to all for your time and ideas.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Install additional PCIE USB controller.

BTW - are your USB 3.0 hubs externally powered?

 

[KT888]

Yes my hubs are all powered.
I've actually got 1x10 USB 3.0 ports and 2x4 port USB3.0 hubs and one 4xUSB 2.0 ports hub.
I never had any limitation warnings before I installed the new stuff.

I'm afraid I've got no PCIe slots available on my board for any additional USB ports. I've got 3 GPUs to support the 5 screens on this system.
Also it seems there's a tradeoff of PCI lanes that would best be utilized for SATA speed rather than USB speed. And since the two are inextricably linked to be working simultaneously all the time it could be an issue. I'm actually just looking for a reason to do an upgrade. Since that 32 core AMD chip hit the market I'm just looking for a REAL limitation. Something my system can't do that new monster can do. A better USB subsystem would be a big improvement but I don't know if it has that. I know it has loads of extra PCIe lanes over my current system and that all adds to the available bandwidth for SATA AND USB devices.
Man 64 threads. lol. I can't imagine what that should mean to everything you do. well in 5 years anyway. The software needs some time to catch up. 5 years is probably a little optimistic even.

Real VR environments. Functionally useful voice recognition. True AI connectivity and bandwidth.
Instantaneous switching between applications and even environments on multi OS builds and Virtual environments.

 

[SkyNetRising]

5 screens do not require 3 graphics cards. 2 cards would be enough.

 

[KT888]

Yeah that's the case now but when I bought these cards all the cards of the generation would only support 2 screens independently then you could do it with software to get more than 2 screens but there were practical limitations to that solution that were meaningful enough to me that I went the 3 card route.

Thanks for thinking outside the box. That COULD be a solution. A different GPU could supplant two of those currently occupying PCIe x16 slots.
Freeing up an x16 slot for a 7x USB 3.0 PCIe card.

 

[KT888]

Do you know about the "supposed" 127 other devices you're supposed to be able to daisychain together from a USB 3.0 port. Why am I limited SOOO severely. Relatively speaking.

 

[photonboy]

No idea why you have so many drives but do you need them all at the same time?

I ask because you can buy USB3.0 hubs with buttons to disable each attached drive which essentially unplugs it from the system. I have one from Anker and it works fine.

I use it because it's fricking annoying to have multiple drives turning on and off at times and I certainly am not going to disable the power feature to have them just run all the time as its noisy.

For example: https://www.amazon.com/APANAGE-Splitter-Transfer-Charging-Individual/dp/B07DW646GY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541773146&sr=8-1&keywords=usb+3.0+hub+switches

You can attach up to 11 USB3.0 drives and again as long a you don't exceed the maximum supported at the SAME TIME it should be fine.

(note there are many models with low customer review averages... this one looks ideal for you)

 

[photonboy]

Other:
You may know but there are solutions for drives like the WD MYCLOUD. I bought a 4TB version and added a 4TB backup (as it was cheaper than the 2x4TB version).

So basically a simple NAS but it attaches to my router directly (or via a Gigabit switch) ethernet and I get up to 90MBps files transfers.

It also draws 5W of power idle until I need it (plays my movie collection). I really, really dislike having lots of HDD's that spin at the same time when other options exist.

 

[kalijennifer11]

great idea this is very use full

 

[KT888]

Other:
You may know but there are solutions for drives like the WD MYCLOUD. I bought a 4TB version and added a 4TB backup (as it was cheaper than the 2x4TB version).

So basically a simple NAS but it attaches to my router directly (or via a Gigabit switch) ethernet and I get up to 90MBps files transfers.

It also draws 5W of power idle until I need it (plays my movie collection). I really, really dislike having lots of HDD's that spin at the same time when other options exist.

How would that work for my situation. I've got many collections that have gotten on the large side of huge. I don't need them all the time but I don't want to be turning drives off and on to be getting access to the contents contained therein. So I want all the drives to be connected all the time even though I'll use most of them never.

I want 18x2 so 36 drives

I've got the 18x SATA III internal connections. I want these because internal drives spin up significantly faster than external drives. Also on system boot time internal drives hardly slow down post at all but if I've got even 6 external drives spinning up during post it's at least 10-15 minutes. I'm not exaggerating.

So the internals are necessary because when I'm moving stuff around I don't want to be unplugging a drive so that I can plug in a different drive it's extremely inefficient in a time management way that adds up to all the instances you are so derailed in a day (And it's lots) And it's not just about waiting to do the activity it's when you get back to what you were initially doing then you have to rethink it, get back to your previous mindset and thought process.
people will spend 3-5 times longer getting back on track after these distractions than the distraction itself.
So I want x internal drives x being as many as I can have instantly accessible for functional reasons.

And
18x USB 3.0
For the same reason. Having to keep changing connections or even turning off a switch seems like a waste of time to me. I'm only using maybe 3 or 4 sets of internal and backups at a time so that's all the power I need but I do need at least that. My hubs are all externally powered.

I do have two network ports in my router I could plug in a self contained set maybe but they'd still have to be plugged in all the time.
I'm pretty sure I can have everything I have accessible as my personal cloud of x TBs of stuff. I just have to set it up that way. It's just a software thing.
So I never gave much thought to the cloud services out there.
Previously I had the 4x2 drives that just ported over to this system in another system in my network but transfer times are much shorter for system attached drives than for network attached drives. And when you're talking large transfers it all adds up.

And the biggest thing is I'm pretty sure I SHOULD be able to do what I'm wanting to do. So it makes no sense to not do it.
I mean it's not working because somethings not working properly. Not because of an actual technological limitation.

 

[KT888]

No idea why you have so many drives but do you need them all at the same time?

I ask because you can buy USB3.0 hubs with buttons to disable each attached drive which essentially unplugs it from the system. I have one from Anker and it works fine.

I use it because it's fricking annoying to have multiple drives turning on and off at times and I certainly am not going to disable the power feature to have them just run all the time as its noisy.

For example: https://www.amazon.com/APANAGE-Splitter-Transfer-Charging-Individual/dp/B07DW646GY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541773146&sr=8-1&keywords=usb+3.0+hub+switches

You can attach up to 11 USB3.0 drives and again as long a you don't exceed the maximum supported at the SAME TIME it should be fine.

(note there are many models with low customer review averages... this one looks ideal for you)

I actually checked out THIS actual hub. It's great because it's 11 ports but not great because only 7 are for data transfer and that's what I need all of them for. So the 10 port hub I got gave me 3 extra ports I could use for what I need it for. It's not individually switchable but actually I've got the surge protected powerbar plugged into a remote controlled switch so I just hit the switch and it powers down the works. That's the state most of the time unless I'm doing backups.