![](http://blog.fosketts.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/08mbp_15.png "15\")
It turns out that Apple made at least a few errors in designing the hardware of the MacBook Pro. After living with it for a solid week, I can report that, along with the useless ambient light sensor and wimpy power cord, both of the ‘Pro’s USB ports are compromised! The left side doesn’t have the power to spin up a disk drive, and the right side shares bandwidth with the iSight camera built into the lid. Why would Apple make this kind of mistake when PC vendors get these things right?
My initial disappointment that the 15″ MacBook Pro has just two USB ports, one on each side, was tempered by the fact that lots of other notebooks have the same problem. Where my old Dell XPS M1210 had two ports on each side, my new XPS M1330 has just one per side. On the other hand, the Mac does feature a pair of FireWire ports, one 400 and the other 800 and both using full-size connectors, while the Dells each have just a single mini 400.
But, as many have discovered, not all USB ports are created equal. There are three things to consider when it comes to USB ports:
- Low-speed, full-speed, and high-speed – Most folks know that the old slow USB standard was updated with something often called USB 2.0. But, given that nearly all controllers support both the old and new standards these days, this consideration is largely irrelevant. One thing that may surprise you is that modern controllers support “virtual” USB ports for each speed – connect a low-speed device in a high-speed port, and it is connected to a different bus than would be used by a high-speed device connected to the same port.
- Hidden hubs – Most people don’t realize that most devices have internal USB hubs hidden inside, sharing bandwidth between connected peripherals and internal system components. In practice, this means that a device’s speed can vary depending on which physical port you plug it into.
- Power – Not all ports are supplied with the same amount of electrical current, either. If a peripheral uses a lot of power, it can fail to work in one port and work fine in another. Disk drives are especially hungry, so many vendors supply them with “Y cables” that plug into two ports at once. This is a big problem for add-on cards, too, since most PCMCIA / CardBus / ExpressCard slots don’t supply much power at all.
I haven’t had much trouble with this in the past, but these issues reared their heads with my new MacBook Pro. It seems that both of the Mac’s USB ports are limited:
- The left-hand port (by the MagSafe connector) does not offer enough power to spin up my Maxtor OneTouch Mini 4 hard drive. This is a shame, since this high-speed port is not shared with any internal devices and thus should be faster. Low-speed devices using this port, however, have to share bandwidth with the internal BlueTooth transceiver.
- The right-hand port offers enough power for every drive I’ve tried, but shares high-speed bandwidth with the built-in iSight camera. Low-speed devices like my KVM‘s keyboard and mouse cable share a hub with the internal keyboard and mouse.
Although neither port is really perfect, it seems that I will tend to use the right-hand port more when I am traveling since I won’t have to worry about power. Because I’ve already found myself juggling connectors, I’ll probably end up attaching a powered hub to the left port to use when I’m at home.
None of this is really critical – the system works fine. But I’m somewhat disappointed that Apple would design in a frustration like this. How many non-technical folks are going to buy a USB drive and assume it’s flaky because it doesn’t work half the time? And how many will visit the genius bar when they notice the pattern of left-side/right-side? The MacBook has the same power issue, too. For the record, my Dells work fine…
What bothers me these days: I bought an exteral enclosure and a seagate 320GB disk to make a clone of my disk so it can be replaced by the new seagate disk. When working with Windows XP via Bootcamp the disk works just fine on both the left and the right USB port. But when I’m running OSX, it just doesn’t work at all! I coudn’t test it with the disk powered by both USB ports, because the cable is too short.
I have the early MacbookPro, when I used Tiger my rightside usb was able to feed enough power to the Buffalo's MiniStation. Ysterday I updraded to the Leopard and I've had a lot of problems. The Buffalo will work (from right side), but time to time the osx just notces that “you have illegally removed your USB device”, and I haven't even touch the cables. And the most horrible part is, that it crashes sometimes the whole OSX!!! That is not Apple way, feels like Windows user… It's really weird that the switching the OSX to the Leopard did this…
I have the early MacbookPro, when I used Tiger my rightside usb was able to feed enough power to the Buffalo’s MiniStation. Ysterday I updraded to the Leopard and I’ve had a lot of problems. The Buffalo will work (from right side), but time to time the osx just notces that “you have illegally removed your USB device”, and I haven’t even touch the cables. And the most horrible part is, that it crashes sometimes the whole OSX!!! That is not Apple way, feels like Windows user… It’s really weird that the switching the OSX to the Leopard did this…
Has anyone found a solution to this slow usb memory sticks on macbook problem? I have a macbook pro generation 3,1 and on it’s become unbearable. I’ve honestly tried everyhting!!!! The slow usb transfer speeds exist on my macbook pro under leopard, snow leopard, linux, windows xp, and on both ports!!! ARGHH!!! The only time usb transfer speeds seem normal is when I use my external hard drive or ipod 160gb classic. I know others have complained that it happens with their ext hd’s but with me that seems to be okay (I use a 160gb maxtor that has power needs requiring it be plugged into two usb ports simultaneously for it to work properly). I just haven’t found a usb stick that will work at a decent speed with my macbook pro. This problem is most manifest when transferring things from the laptop to the usb and much less so vice versa.
Please help. Any advice would be sincerely appreciated.
🙂
I’m just discovering the frustration this problem can cause. What a lame dilemma to face on a computer that was supposedly designed specifically for communications professionals. What about the specs on the firewire port? What if I put a Firewire/USB hub on that port? Would it output enough current to power a portable external drive?
I’ve also came across this issue recently with my WD Passport I pulled out to look for some old files. In an attempt to try the left hand port on my mbp I noticed that all I received was a blinking status/power light. So I tried the right hand side which seemed to spin up the drive and start reading it, then doing the dreaded tick with a moment of silence then spinning again.
After a few loops of it failing it would tell me that the device has been prematurely removed, spite which nothing was touched. So I tailed the system log while I tried plugging it in to see if there were errors occurring that might elude to if it was unable to read the drive or not (No one wants to buy a new drive right?)
From the logs it looked as if there was a problem mounting it, and it being disconnected on its own. So I thought to myself, I’m pretty positive when I bought this twice overpriced silver mobile computational machine … I made sure it had 2.0 ports on it. But I digress, I pulled up the System Profiler to check out the USB ports on it to find out essentially your exact post. Needless to say after seeing that the bus is shared with these other components was pretty disheartening at the least. I don’t know anyone who likes having this Y cable flopping all around behind the LCD screen, maybe it’s just my obsessive compulsive minimalism driving me insane.
For what it’s worth (and for reassurance) using the 6″ single USB connected to my Dell, works fine also.
SYSTEM LOG
———————————–
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: ExtFS: Oops! Media ‘disk1s1’ removed while still mounted!
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: Attempting to remove from pending states.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: ExtFS: Media ” removed. Retain count = 3.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]: disk1s1: media is not present.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: Attempting to remove from pending states.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]:
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: ExtFS: Media ” removed. Retain count = 5.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]:
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]: disk1s1: media is not present.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]:
Oct 9 18:33:09: — last message repeated 1 time —
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]: disk1s1: media is not present.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]:
Oct 9 18:32:56 AppleJacks mds[23]: (/Volumes/PASSPORT/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/CD5F69BF-747A-4E77-B9C7-AF4586859430)(Error) IndexCI in indexRestoreHeaderFromBuffer:Invalid version (0) expected (63)
Oct 9 18:32:56 AppleJacks mds[23]: (/Volumes/PASSPORT/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/CD5F69BF-747A-4E77-B9C7-AF4586859430)(Error) IndexCI in recoverIndex:Unrecoverable error: Malformed index head file (live.2.)
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: ExtFS: Oops! Media ‘disk1s1’ removed while still mounted!
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: Attempting to remove from pending states.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: ExtFS: Media ” removed. Retain count = 3.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]: disk1s1: media is not present.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: Attempting to remove from pending states.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]:
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: ExtFS: Media ” removed. Retain count = 5.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]:
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]: disk1s1: media is not present.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]:
I've also came across this issue recently with my WD Passport I pulled out to look for some old files. In an attempt to try the left hand port on my mbp I noticed that all I received was a blinking status/power light. So I tried the right hand side which seemed to spin up the drive and start reading it, then doing the dreaded tick with a moment of silence then spinning again.
After a few loops of it failing it would tell me that the device has been prematurely removed, spite which nothing was touched. So I tailed the system log while I tried plugging it in to see if there were errors occurring that might elude to if it was unable to read the drive or not (No one wants to buy a new drive right?)
From the logs it looked as if there was a problem mounting it, and it being disconnected on its own. So I thought to myself, I'm pretty positive when I bought this twice overpriced silver mobile computational machine … I made sure it had 2.0 ports on it. But I digress, I pulled up the System Profiler to check out the USB ports on it to find out essentially your exact post. Needless to say after seeing that the bus is shared with these other components was pretty disheartening at the least. I don't know anyone who likes having this Y cable flopping all around behind the LCD screen, maybe it's just my obsessive compulsive minimalism driving me insane.
For what it's worth (and for reassurance) using the 6″ single USB connected to my Dell, works fine also.
SYSTEM LOG
———————————–
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: ExtFS: Oops! Media 'disk1s1' removed while still mounted!
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: Attempting to remove <disk1s1, 0x15b5b0> from pending states.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: ExtFS: Media '<disk1s1, 0x15b5b0>' removed. Retain count = 3.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]: disk1s1: media is not present.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: Attempting to remove <disk1, 0x159a30> from pending states.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]:
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: ExtFS: Media '<disk1, 0x159a30>' removed. Retain count = 5.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]:
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]: disk1s1: media is not present.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]:
Oct 9 18:33:09: — last message repeated 1 time —
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]: disk1s1: media is not present.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]:
Oct 9 18:32:56 AppleJacks mds[23]: (/Volumes/PASSPORT/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/CD5F69BF-747A-4E77-B9C7-AF4586859430)(Error) IndexCI in indexRestoreHeaderFromBuffer:Invalid version (0) expected (63)
Oct 9 18:32:56 AppleJacks mds[23]: (/Volumes/PASSPORT/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/CD5F69BF-747A-4E77-B9C7-AF4586859430)(Error) IndexCI in recoverIndex:Unrecoverable error: Malformed index head file (live.2.)
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: ExtFS: Oops! Media 'disk1s1' removed while still mounted!
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: Attempting to remove <disk1s1, 0x15b5b0> from pending states.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: ExtFS: Media '<disk1s1, 0x15b5b0>' removed. Retain count = 3.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]: disk1s1: media is not present.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: Attempting to remove <disk1, 0x159a30> from pending states.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]:
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks efssmartd[147]: ExtFS: Media '<disk1, 0x159a30>' removed. Retain count = 5.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]:
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]: disk1s1: media is not present.
Oct 9 18:33:09 AppleJacks kernel[0]: