Genesys gl811e - based usb mass storage

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2007 at 06:59:01AM -0400, Mike Kallies wrote:
> I think I've got the same device.  The gl811e is a tiny little surface
> mount chip on the back.
> 
> It works for me, but it's very unreliable.  I just dd'd a drive and
> had to reboot once because of a "bus error", then on the second
> attempt, it failed about 5 times.  dd was kind enough to inform me the
> number of the block it failed on so that I could turn it off cold,
> then turn it back on and continue roughly where I left off.  BTW, the
> thing is just as flakey in the Windows world as the Linux world.
> 
> The first one I bought I had to return because it was dead... no
> lights, no spin-up, nothing.
> 
> The one I have now generally doesn't like it when you hot-plug it.
> Try plugging it in, then turning it on, rather than the other way
> around.
> 
> We use a lot of other USB-IDE converters at the workplace.  For most
> of them, the packaging and physical design seems to be really top
> notch, but the electronics fail like nothing.
> 
> Does anyone know of any reliable ones?  e.g, something you could leave
> on all day as a second drive?

My wife has a 2.5" bright red one from Vantec NexStar.  Works perfectly
with her old 60GB laptop ide drive.  No problems ever with either linux
or windows, although it does need both usb connectors to power the drive
reliably.  A 3.5" version would of course have a power brick instead.

Her GXT 4GB usb key on the other hand is amazingly unreliable and
corrupts data often.  A 256MB usb key she got free at a potential grad
students day at UofT works perfectly.  I also recently played with a GXT
usb card reader, which simply did not work properly at all, with either
windows or linux.  So far GXT = Crap in my book.  A kingston card reader
worked perfectly, as do the mitsumi floppy/card reader combos I have
bought quite a few off.

--
Len Sorensen
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