Dell M4400 with ICH9M-E/M SATA controller not working with USB drives

[idata]

Hi,

I have a Dell M4400 running Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit. I swap regularly between my desktop and laptop so use a 2.5" USB SATA drive as a data drive.

If I plug the drive into my M4400 the drive activity light comes on and remains on and Windows explorer hangs.

If I plug in an older 2.5" USB PATA drive, it works fine

I have tried several 2.5" USB SATA drives and the results are the same. They work fine on my old laptop and desk top.

At Dells suggestion I tried changing the BIOS mode from IRRT to AHCI, reformated the system hard drive and the reinstalled windows 7. The USB drived worked for a short while but now has locked up again.

Any suggestions as to how I can get my Dell to work correctly with the USB drive?

Thanks

Jasper.

[idata]

Are you using the Control Point software? Just curious as I have a M4400 with the same chipset and the Control Point software really bogged me down. I also have found that if I have used a USB port with a mouse dongle or a flash drive it doesn't want to reset. If you go into "Device Manager" and click and expand "Universal Serial Bus Controllers" then highlight each "USB Root Hub" then go to "Advanced" tab and "Reset" in lower right corner. Change to "Power Management" tab and uncheck box about turning off to save power. Do this for all "USB Root Hub" entries and see if it makes a difference. You may have to reboot after doing this, but I don't think so. Good Luck

[idata]

I know it is old thread, but I wanted to answer for anyone elses benefit. No, I do not install Dell Control Bloat (but you will not have acces to some features if you don't, but it is worth it to not install) and I also do not install the Dell Wireless Card software for performance reasons. The Windows 7 driver install works far better (at least for 1510N card).

Yes, to the USB reset problem as have to perform the USB reset procedure on some new devices. My daughter has an Inspiron 1545 (w/ Vista) with ICH9 and "reset" would not work to connect to her iPod Touch. Ended up doing reinstall of OS.

I have a Inspiron 1525 with ICH9 and with the Intel ICH9 drivers installed (via F6 mode) will not connect with my USB portable hard drive, but if I let Windows 7 install the included ICH9 drivers it will connect with the drive. The Intel drivers appeared to not supply enough power (I had no way of testing this though).