Operating System boot from USB PEN Drive via TUSB7340

Hi Jorge,

Thanks for your message, but I suffered booting issue from end-customer inquired, could you help us to fix issue? Thanks!

Problem:

The customer is trying to boot to an optical drive connected to this adapter. The system BIOS is capable of booting from USB.

The optical drive connected to this adapter shows up in the BIOS but it doesn’t boot to it. The LED on the optical drive doesn’t blink. This drive is set to have the boot priority in the BIOS.

Different optical drives were used without success. Even SATA drives connected to this adapter isn’t able to boot reliably. All drives show up fine in Windows if they are not being used as boot drives. This PC has been proven to be able to boot with other adapters.

System configuration:

PC is Lenovo M93 10AAS3VG00 with an i5 4570T 64 bit processor in a proprietary mother board, running AMI BIOS version FBKTB0YUS and Windows 7 embedded. (I5-4570T is fourth generation Intel core - Haswell, It’s using Q87 and is Series 9.)

The optical drives are connected to the computer via the Siig USB to SATA adapter through USB port number 4 on the computer.  This is a USB 3.0 port without any special functions (charging power, keyboard wake up, etc.).

PCI Express 4-Port SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Host Adapter: http://www.siig.com/dp-usb-3-0-4-port-pcie-i-e.html

Optical drives tested:

Teac 5500S

Teac DV-W524GS-100

TSST corp SH-224DB

Sony Optiarc AD-7280S

Other observations:

These are all SATA drives we have used successfully with other PC’s that have multiple SATA ports.  Used with the Siig adapter, I am now seeing no blinking activity light during the pre-boot cycle.  However, after the OS has been loaded on the HDD, windows works fine with these drives and the Siig adapter, reading directories and accessing files.  Most of the work has been done with the SH-224.

I have also tried substituting other drives with their own converters built in.  These drives both boot more reliably than the above drives connected with the Siig adapter.  These drives both show blinking activity lights during pre-boot and bootable disks read and boot the computer.

TSST corp SE-208AB

PLDS DVD-RW DS8ABSH

I also tried swapping power supplies that feed the adapter, using different bricks from the Siig kits as well as a multi output Delta computer supply with no change in behavior.

The most troubling thing about this is that it is somewhat intermittent.  I have difficulty reproducing the problem from machine to machine.  There does not seem to be any correlation to BIOS version or individual adaptor, power supply or computer. 

Getting boot CD’s to work is hit and miss.  As I stated in my first note, I could get a CD to boot if I left the “automatically reboot” state for some extended period of time, but this was by no means a sure thing.  On some systems (all the same model PC) I can get more consistent results than others.

Last Friday I had some success with restarting machines after a cold boot.  While only about one in ten booted from a cold start up with the machine’s power switch being turned on (or application of power at the power inlet) nine out of ten booted after resetting the machines (ctrl alt del).

This morning I have tested several other machines and found all of these would boot from a reset but only one (in five) would boot from a cold start.  The cold start was not consistent, but would boot two out of three times.