External HDs keep disconnecting

[dreamtuned]

I have fresh installation of Sierra 10.12.2 on my new SSD and decided to use the old 2GB hard drive externally through USB.
Now, on my machine I have two USB 3 ports. The one is for my Samsung HD and the other for the Boxed internal (now external).
I use 4 more USB 2 ports for iLock, Keyboard, Mouse and Midi Keyboard Controller.

The external hard drives keep disconnecting and sometimes not even connecting when I work on the SSD.
Is this a hardware problem I need to take care of or I need to install some kexts for USB?

 

[kiiroaka]

Is the external enclosure USB3.0? Is the USB3.0 port off an ASMedia controller?

I had a $10 external 2.5" enclosure, in which I installed a fresh, out of the box 500GB HDD, and my PC would not see it as USB3.0. I figure that there was an incompatibility with the on-board USB3.0 enclosure chip and the motherboard controller chip. So I only use it on a USB 2.0 port, since it cannot be seen on a USB3.0 port. On my system USB3.0 USB sticks are seen fine, so long as the OS can see how it was formatted. So I have to label my USB sticks HFS, FAT32, or EXT (OSX, Windows, or Linux).

Most probably it is a hardware or firmware problem. First see if the problem occurs on an USB2.0 port. The other possibility would be the IRQs for the USB ports, with one taking priority over another, with the keyboard usually getting the highest (lowest number) IRQ. If you have a PS2 port on that mobo, along with a PS2 keyboard, then use the PS2 port and keyboard.

No, I think you're having USB IRQ contention, where something gets sent to one USB device and the disk drive USB gets timed out. Start by writing down how they are connected and moving the devices around (always with the PC shutdown and the AC cord removed) to see if you can isolate the problem. It could be as simple as iLock hogging resources as it encrypts and decrypts all OS calls. Disable it for testing purposes.