Seagate 3TB ST3000DM001 hard drive not recognized by Linux, causes fdisk to hang

I'm running Kubuntu 12.04. I have a brand new, never used Seagate 3TB ST3000DM001 hard drive. It's an internal drive. I installed it in a USB enclosure.

When I connect it to my PC, nothing happens automatically. When I run sudo fdisk -l, fdisk hangs (without reporting this drive) until I disconnect this drive from the USB port. blkid won't report it either.

I tried connecting it to both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports on my PC. I got the same result either way. I tried two different USB enclosures with the same result.

If I take the same drive, same enclosure and connect it to a Windows 7 laptop, it is recognized automatically as a USB mass storage device.

I want to format the drive (probably ext4) and copy files to it. I have another drive, also in a USB enclosure, that is connected via USB 3.0 to this PC and it works fine. It's a 2.0 TB Samsung HDD. I plan to copy files from the 2TB to the 3TB drive, once I get this issue resolved.

My motherboard is an Asus P8B WS LGA1155/ Intel C206/ Quad CrossFireX/ SATA3&USB3.0/ A&2GbE/ ATX. Linux kernel is 3.2.

dmesg output from multiple connection attempts:

[43595.344419] usb 2-1.1: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci_hcd
[43605.570093] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
[43605.570435] scsi6 : usb-storage 2-1.1:1.0
[43605.570665] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
[43605.570673] USB Mass Storage support registered.
[43606.566344] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ST3000DM 001-9YN166       CC4C PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[43606.568089] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
[43606.569510] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16).
[43606.569884] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 5860533168 512-byte logical blocks: (3.00 TB/2.72 TiB)
[43606.572883] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[43606.572892] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
[43606.574012] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
[43606.574024] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[43606.574857] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16).
[43606.576733] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
[43606.576740] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[43636.913914] usb 2-1.1: reset high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci_hcd
[43667.845759] usb 2-1.1: reset high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci_hcd
[43674.904939] usb 2-1.1: USB disconnect, device number 4
[43674.912044] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled error code
[43674.912055] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb]  Result: hostbyte=DID_NO_CONNECT driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[43674.912065] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[43674.912085] end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0
[43674.912094] quiet_error: 6 callbacks suppressed
[43674.912099] Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 0
[43674.912242] ldm_validate_partition_table(): Disk read failed.
[43674.912295] Dev sdb: unable to read RDB block 0
[43674.912377]  sdb: unable to read partition table
[43674.912718] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] READ CAPACITY failed
[43674.912731] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb]  Result: hostbyte=DID_NO_CONNECT driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[43674.912739] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense not available.
[43674.913479] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
[43674.913487] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[43674.913492] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk

The Seagate 3TB ST3000DM001 hard drive will work in Linux (I'm using Kubuntu 12.04) with USB 3.0 and an external enclosure. I had to initially format the drive using gdisk while it was mounted internally. Then, with the right external enclosure, simply plug it in and it is recognized automatically. The file manager shows 2.7TB free. It acts like a usual USB hard drive. Everything is typical and there are no problems.

The problems could come from trying to use fdisk or using a drive enclosure that doesn't support drives larger than 2 TB or possibly from some incompatibilities.

I did get it working with the Syba USB dock (sybausa.com/productInfo.php?iid=1108) with Maximum Capacity (per Bay) of 3TB. I'm not sure if I'll stick with this dock, but it is working.

Confirmed. However, the choice of dock is of paramount importance. The first dock I got, a startech unidock2u, showed the same errors, even when I formatted the drive first, and despite being advertised compatible with drives up to 4TB and Linux. The post above is the only one I've found that recounts success using a 3TB with Linux. And happily the Syba mentioned does work as described. I found it online as "Syba CL-ENC50038 Dual Mode SATA III HDD Duplicator and Docking Station" but the picture shows it labelled/branded "Connectland", and that is what I have also. I first plugged in my 3TB Seagate (ST3000DM001) to a motherboard SATA port that is 3TB capable and formatted the drive. (I did not think to try it first without formatting.) But it does work afterwards perfectly in the dock. Two 3.5" 3TB drives at the same time work OK also.

I am using ST3000DM001 3TB drives and smaller drives with a Connectland DOCK-3UBT3 (same as Syba above) on Debian Wheezy/Sid, kernel 3.2.0. I expect it would also work on CentOS 6 but, I have not tested it yet. My reasoning is that the USB errors I had gotten with a 3TB drive had been identical on CentOS (2.6.32) and Debian (3.2.0).