MiSTer FPGA Forum

I am hitting a brick wall with my MISTer. I have had problems getting an external hard drive (a WD Black 5TB external USB hard drive: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VNTFHD5) to regularly be seen by my MISTer. Sometimes it sees it, sometimes not.

In an effort to get around this I picked up an external SSD (Crucial X8 4TB Portable SSD https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B787PNL7). It is exFAT formatted (as is the WD hard drive) and is recognized by my PC. I copied the entirety of the files from the WD to the SSD. But every time I try to run a game that is stored on the SSD the screen goes blank! I don't know what to do about this.

Previously, while using the WD hard drive I made some efforts to get that to work regularly. I picked up a couple of USB splitter power cables: Cable Matters Micro USB 3.0 to USB Splitter Cable (USB Y-Cable, USB Y Cable) 20 Inches https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L1K1OIA from Amazon but the external hard drive often does not read from the Mister. I thought the drive needed more power to run properly, but no luck yet.

I even got the MisterAddons MiSTer FPGA DC Power Jumper also in hopes that might help. But that didn’t help either. At least the build looks cleaner

I can really use some advise on how to fix what I am doing wrong!! HELP!!

It does sound like a power issue, which power supply are you using?

It is the GST / GST60A05-P1J MEAN WELL GST Series Desktop Adaptor Power Supply

It's possible that both those drives don't work with a USB 2.0 interface.
They may seem to work until you start transferring files and when it tries to bump up the speed, they just die
I could be wrong and those drives may support usb 2.0 but from their product descriptions, they don't mention usb 2.0 compatability.
All my USB 3.0 drives that don't support USB 2.0 interfaces don't work much, if at all, with Mister.
Some of my older WD drives that state they are usb 2.0 and 3.0 compatible work.

Flandango wrote: ↑Sat Apr 29, 2023 12:54 pm

It's possible that both those drives don't work with a USB 2.0 interface. [...]

I can copy that in some way. I had similar issues with "some drives" connected to my PC via an USB3<->SATA adapter. Turned out that when connecting a SSD that way to a PC's on-board USB3-Port, the drive immediately "screams" with SMART errors. But no issues at all when using a powered USB3 hub.