USB hard drive hangs machine

From: Dan Mahoney (dmahoney_at_deepdata.com)
Date: 12/30/03 

Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 12:36:50 -0800

I'm running a Compaq ProLiant ML370 with 4 Xeon processors and 2.5 GB of
RAM. I loaded it with RedHat 8, but have since compiled a 2.4.23 kernel.
USB core and usb-storage are loaded as modules.

The system runs just great - until I plug a Western Digital USB hard
drive (250 GB capacity) into the machine (formatted as ext3). As soon as
I start to copy files on to the USB drive, the system hangs up solid.
There are no error messages in /var/log/messages.

I'm also using a USB printer with no problem.

I thought the problem with USB hard drives was supposed to be fixed in
the 2.4.20 (or thereabouts) kernel. Any ideas why this happens, and if
there's a workaround for it? This machine is very soon going to become
our production server, so I obviously don't want to have it hanging me :)

Dan

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