What power supply do you use? Maybe there is current problem. becouse drive uses more current... Just in case you can try change to another power supply. What else is used at the same time (Wireless, LAN connections)? Also you can measure how much current carambola uses from power supply.

I have just checked with my lab power supply and it looks like it's not a power issue. It shouldn't be: the USB thumb drives should not require more than 100mA. Anyway, the power is holding up fine with the USB drive pulling about 50mA.

On my OpenWrt router (a TP-Link WR1043nd) the USB thumb drives still work fine, so it's not a USB drive issue either. I'm using firmware I built this morning, r30001 kernel 2.6.39.4.

I'll see if I can connect a different type of USB device.

Checking the 12v power supply will not tell you much. You need to probe the 5v power supply to see if it is getting pulled down. I'll bet with the drive plugged in that you won't see 5V.

Those switching regulators are rated to allow 3A to be drawn, but the inductor, diode, etc choices make that limit lower. I know drawing 1A on my 5v switching regulator drops the voltage down below 4.5V. Different components and a different layout should be considered.

My dev board did not have the esd components populated either.

Hi,

has anyone found a way to use a key connected to USB? I'm trying to do it but it still keeps disconnecting; the power supply is 2A @ 12V (but for what I have read this may not be the problem)...

Hi,

how can I reproduce problem on my side? Can you provide more information like:
- What are you doing with that drive: reading/writing some information to it or just connected and it starts connecting and disconnecting, or it starts after some time?
- What manufacturer/model has made it?
- Can you copy some logs, what you see in console?
- What FW version you have installed maybe some other modules?