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Associate III
December 17, 2025
Question

USB MSC very slow to enumerate SD card formatted with FAT32

  • December 17, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 604 views

Hi,

We are using a custom board based on STM32U5G7VJTxQ and implementing USB Mass Storage Class (USBX) to expose an SD card formatted with a file system created using FileX.

The SD card when formatted with FAT32 (using FileX API), the USB mass storage device takes a very long time to become available on Windows.

Observed behavior:

  • As soon as the USB cable is plugged in, Windows shows a pop-up message:
    "Please insert a disk into USB drive"
  • After approximately 3-4 minutes, the drive finally appears automatically and becomes accessible.

Once the drive is mounted, it works normally.

We would like to understand:

  • What could cause this very slow enumeration/access time with FAT32?
  • Are there any known limitations or required configurations in USBX + FileX when using FAT32?
  • Could this be related to SD card access speed, cluster size, cache configuration, or USB MSC parameters?
  • Are we missing any required FileX, USBX, or HAL configurations specific to FAT32?

Any guidance or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thank you!

1 reply

Andrew Neil
Super User
December 17, 2025

Is this on just one Windows Host, or have you tried more?

What Windows version(s)?

 


@Gowri_M wrote:

Any guidance or suggestions would be appreciated.


Have you tried instrumenting your code to see what's going on in your system ?

Have you tried any Windows USB diagnostic tools to see what's going on in the Host ?

Have you tried any other Hosts besides Windows?

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work.
Gowri_MAuthor
Associate III
December 17, 2025

Hi

We tried it on windows 10.

Andrew Neil
Super User
December 17, 2025

Just one single Win 10 system?

Also, what SD-Card - brand, size, etc ?

Does that card work OK in other places ?

Have you tried other SD Cards?

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work.