Can anyone who has gotten their Hitachi Touro to work with Windows 8 confirm the USB 3.0 host controller?
After first noticing the compatibility issues when I first installed Windows 8, I traded my Hitachi drive for my brother's Seagate Expansion drive. His drive is smaller capacity, but at least I can use it with my computer.
Anyway, my brother's computer is having some issues and I was going to try reinstalling Windows 7. before doing that, I decided to do a test installation of Windows 8. His computer is running on an Intel Series 4 chipset and I have added a USB 3.0 add-on card to connect to his external drive. After installing Windows 8 to his computer, I was able to access the Hitachi Touro Pro hard drive with no issues at all.
I checked in the device manager and his USB 3.0 host controller is listed as Renesas Electronics USB 3.0 Host Controller. My computer that has problems with the Hitachi drive is running on an Intel H77 based motherboard with integrated USB 3.0. The host controller on my computer is listed as Intel USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller - 0100 (Microsoft).
Based on this information, would the issue lie with the drivers for the USB 3.0 controller, and not the operating system? Intel doesn't provide any updated drivers for the USB 3.0 on Windows 8; only previous versions of the OS.
(Update)
I just found a thread at the Intel Support Community that has over 225 comments from users discussing this issue. Apparently the native Windows 8 drivers from Microsoft for the Intel USB 3.0 controller are causing issues with other USB 3.0 devices as well. Someone hacked the lasted Windows 7 driver for the Intel USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller to make it work for Windows 8. It is available for download on page 16 of that thread. You must disable driver signing to be able to install the driver.
- Hold the Shift key while selecting Restart to enter Advanced Startup Options
- Click Troubleshoot
- Click Advanced Options
- Click Startup Settings
- Click Restart
- After the computer reboots, select option 7 to disable driver signature enforcement
- Go to Device Manager
- Right-click on your USB 3.0 host controller and select Update Driver
- Select "Browse my computer for driver software"
- Choose "Let me pick..."
- Click the Have Disk button
- Browse to where you downloaded the modified driver and select it
- Click Next
- Select the option to install when warned about digital driver signing
- If an unknown device appears, you can install by selecting the "Browse..." option and entering the containing folder rather than having to manually pick a specific driver. This will install the Intel USB 3.0 Root Hub
Hopefully, Intel will recognize this issue and release updated drivers. Until then, this will hopefully work with no issues.