On Sun, Apr 06, 2025 at 05:42:19PM +0300, Serkan Kurt wrote:

Hello. A USBA (ss) wireless mouse is connected to the laptop. When I
connect a WD Element 1 TB or WD Element 4 TB external disk to the other
USBA (ss) port, the working distance of the mouse drops to about 0.5
meters. Normally 10 meters. The laptop has 2 USBA (ss) ports. The two ports are side by side. Could there be a hardware problem? Do you have any suggestions for solving the problem?

Debian Trixie amd64

sure! Don't plug them in at the same time. SCNR

-H


--
Henning Follmann | hfollmann@itcfollmann.com

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Serkan Kurt (HE12025-04-06):

Hello. A USBA (ss) wireless mouse is connected to the laptop. When I
connect a WD Element 1 TB or WD Element 4 TB external disk to the other
USBA (ss) port, the working distance of the mouse drops to about 0.5
meters. Normally 10 meters. The laptop has 2 USBA (ss) ports. The two ports are side by side. Could there be a hardware problem? Do you have any suggestions for solving the problem?

Two experiments you need to run:

Insert a USB hub with its own power supply, first between the computer
and the external drive, second between the computer and the wireless
mouse. If it changes something you know it is because of power supply
issues.

Insert a long male-female cable between the computer and the drive and
one between the computer and the receiver for the mouse and place them
far apart. If it changes something you know it is probably because of
radio interferences.

Regards,

--
Nicolas George

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Nicolas George <george@nsup.org> wrote:

Serkan Kurt (HE12025-04-06):

Hello. A USBA (ss) wireless mouse is connected to the laptop. When I connect a WD Element 1 TB or WD Element 4 TB external disk to the
other USBA (ss) port, the working distance of the mouse drops to
about 0.5 meters. Normally 10 meters. The laptop has 2 USBA (ss)
ports. The two ports are side by side. Could there be a hardware
problem? Do you have any suggestions for solving the problem?

Two experiments you need to run:

Nicolas is quite right if you want a full understanding.

Insert a USB hub with its own power supply, first between the computer
and the external drive, second between the computer and the wireless
mouse. If it changes something you know it is because of power supply
issues.

The above is the most likely cause. The disk perhaps takes nearly all
the available power that is available (WD don't seem to publish power
figures! :( ) A powered hub will supply all the power it needs without
loading your laptop down and so interfering with the power available to
your mouse.

Insert a long male-female cable between the computer and the drive and
one between the computer and the receiver for the mouse and place them
far apart. If it changes something you know it is probably because of
radio interferences.

This is also a possibility but is much less likely since it would
require a fault in the interference generation and suppression in both
devices.

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I occasionally have the wireless mouse and the USB keyboard freeze with XFCE/Bookworm when plug in a (powered) external disk to a USB port. I've ordered a powered USB hub and will see if it stops happening.

Assuming the external USB disk is indeed using its own power, this
suggests the problem is not power and thus a powered hub won't help.

If the USB keyboard is not wireless this also rules out
airwaves interference.

Have you looked at the kernel log? Maybe there are things like USB
disconnects or resets happening because of a faulty USB device
(presumably the disk)?


Stefan

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On 4/7/25 9:23 AM, Serkan Kurt wrote:
. . .

Can the USB3 port be used with the USB2 protocol in terms of software?

I've never heard of USB breaking compatibility with prior versions.

--
JHHL

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I have done after rebooting and didn't see anything, well dmesg, is that the same as the kernel log?
I assumed that if the system was frozen nothing would be written. Keep meaning to organise it so I can ssh into it if it happens. Is
very infrequent.

Oh, wait: is it the whole system that freezes, or is it just the
keyboard and mouse?

If it's the whole system, then it's probably unrelated to the
keyboard/mouse and the way they're connected.


Stefan

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"James H. H. Lampert" <jamesl@touchtonecorp.com> writes:

On 4/7/25 9:23 AM, Serkan Kurt wrote:
. . .

Can the USB3 port be used with the USB2 protocol in terms of software?

I've never heard of USB breaking compatibility with prior versions.

Uncommon to be sure but I remember an old BeagleBoard had this. USB
ports were USB2 only and at the time, mice and keyboards were USB1. You
had to plug in a suitable USB2 hub to be able to use a mouse and
keyboard.

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On Sun, 2025-04-06 at 17:42 +0300, Serkan Kurt wrote:

Hello. A USBA (ss) wireless mouse is connected to the laptop. When I
connect a WD Element 1 TB or WD Element 4 TB external disk to the
other USBA (ss) port, the working distance of the mouse drops to
about 0.5 meters. Normally 10 meters. The laptop has 2 USBA (ss)
ports. The two ports are side by side. Could there be a hardware
problem? Do you have any suggestions for solving the problem?

This is a well-known problem: USB 3 high-speed connections (such as you
would typically have with USB mass storage devices) can cause
electromagnetic interference to wireless devices that operate in the
2.4 GHz frequency bands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_3.0#Radio_frequency_interference


The solution is to move the wireless receiver away from the USB ports
that the external disk is connected to.


--
Jan Claeys

(please don't CC me when replying to the list)

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Jan Claeys <lists@janc.be> wrote:

On Sun, 2025-04-06 at 17:42 +0300, Serkan Kurt wrote:

Hello. A USBA (ss) wireless mouse is connected to the laptop. When I connect a WD Element 1 TB or WD Element 4 TB external disk to the
other USBA (ss) port, the working distance of the mouse drops to
about 0.5 meters. Normally 10 meters. The laptop has 2 USBA (ss)
ports. The two ports are side by side. Could there be a hardware
problem? Do you have any suggestions for solving the problem?

This is a well-known problem: USB 3 high-speed connections (such as
you would typically have with USB mass storage devices) can cause electromagnetic interference to wireless devices that operate in the
2.4 GHz frequency bands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_3.0#Radio_frequency_interference

The article says that may be a problem with USB 3.0 devices. The disks
are USB 3.2. One hopes the early problems have been overcome by now.

The solution is to move the wireless receiver away from the USB ports
that the external disk is connected to.

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On Tue, 2025-04-15 at 20:47 +0100, debian-user@howorth.org.uk wrote:

Jan Claeys <lists@janc.be> wrote:

On Sun, 2025-04-06 at 17:42 +0300, Serkan Kurt wrote:

Hello. A USBA (ss) wireless mouse is connected to the laptop.
When I connect a WD Element 1 TB or WD Element 4 TB external disk
to the other USBA (ss) port, the working distance of the mouse
drops to about 0.5 meters. Normally 10 meters. The laptop has 2
USBA (ss) ports. The two ports are side by side. Could there be a hardware problem? Do you have any suggestions for solving the
problem? 

This is a well-known problem: USB 3 high-speed connections (such as
you would typically have with USB mass storage devices) can cause electromagnetic interference to wireless devices that operate in
the 2.4 GHz frequency bands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_3.0#Radio_frequency_interference

The article says that may be a problem with USB 3.0 devices. The
disks are USB 3.2. One hopes the early problems have been overcome by
now.

The problem is because of the specific data rate (5 Gbit/s, and
possibly also multiples of that?) creating electromagnetic interference
in just the wrong frequency band for a lot of wireless devices (2.4-2.5
GHz). I doubt that can be overcome without significant (and possibly incompatible?) change to (some of) the USB protocols. It definitely
affects some USB 3.1 & 3.2 devices as well.

The USB standards organisation even has a document about this problem: https://www.usb.org/document-library/usb-30-radio-frequency-interference-impact-24-ghz-wireless-devices
(Link to the PDF is on the right.)

You can try using a (better) shielded cable to connect the disk (some
USB disks already come with a shielded cable). But the interference
can also “escape” from e.g. the USB port or controller, which is harder
to replace or fix, of course. It’s generally something the hardware manufacturers should have done better.

What I would suggest is to move the wireless receiver away, either by
plugging it in an USB port in another location (many computers have
some in 2 or 3 locations), or by plugging it in an USB extension cable
(with a plug on one side & a socket on the other side) or in an USB
hub, so that the wireless receiver isn’t near the USB cable & ports
used by the disk anymore.


--
Jan Claeys

(please don't CC me when replying to the list)

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Serkan Kurt <sserkk@gmail.com> wrote:

(Solved) Hello. I solved the problem as follows;

I'm pleased to hear you solved the problem :)

1- I created a file named "disable_usb3.conf" in the
"/etc/modprobe.d/" directory.
2- I added the line "options xhci_hcd no_usb3=1" to the file and
saved it.

I'm curious. Where did you find the documentation for that option?

Also, I don't think you ever stated what version of USB3 the computer
ports support?

3- I restarted the system.

After the above steps, I plugged in the USB external disk. When I
checked with "lsusb -t", the external disk speed was still 5000M. I
changed the ports where the mouse dongle and external disk were
plugged in.
Result; "Class=Mass Storage, Driver=usb-storage, 480M"

I started the process of copying a large file from the external disk
to the local disk. I tried the mouse from far distances. The result
was successful.

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