Comment 108 for bug 61235

I already built the disk of one of my external USB drive directly into my PC (connected via SATA now) and gave the enclosure to a friend. The other USB disk I have is still external, but I had never problems with it.

So could it be possible that the problem depends on the actual USB-to{PATA,SATA,flash} chipset used in the external storage device?
If so, I could test several external hard drives from different vendors at work with my laptop (i855GM chipset), and we could invite others to to the same, and build a "compatibility matrix" out of e.g. USB-ID,PC-chipset, USB controller, USB drive chipset, attached drive model and kernel version. Of course there must be a way to determine the USB drive chipset without opening the enclosure (and thus voiding warranty). If there is enough test data, also hardware defects (defective USB chipset, broken cables, etc.) could be ruled out.