I have a fairly new iMac 21'5" Retina running El Capitan 10.11.4, with Parallels 11.1.3 (32521). It has built-in USB 3.0 ports; I've connected an Anker USB 3.0 7-port hub (+ 3 charging ports); with several USB 3.0 external drives attached to the hub. Two of them are in NTFS format and set up in Parallels to be assigned permanently to my Windows VM when it starts. When I boot the Mac, System Information shows these two drives are on the USB 3.0 hub. When I start the Windows VM, these 2 external drives are shifted under the USB 2.0 hub and are mounted as drives in Windows, but they only operate at USB 2.0 speed. I followed the link given in Parallels configuration help for how to enable 3.0 support in Windows 7. The link takes me to https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/19880 I downloaded and installed the USB 3.0 Renesas Electronics USB 3.0 driver (USB3.0_allOS_2.1.28.1_PV.exe) that was available on this page, then enabled USB 3.0 support in the Parallels configuration for the VM (Hardware > USB & Bluetooth > Advanced Settings > Enable USB 3.0), rebooted Windows to let the driver get fully installed and loaded, then rebooted the Mac. As has always been the case, the external drives start out as USB 3.0 devices after the Mac reboot. However, they are still shifted to the USB 2.0 hub as soon as Windows starts. I get a pop-up notification from the Windows taskbar tray - basically it says the USB Mass Storage could run faster if I connected to a USB 3.0 Superspeed port. Apparently the driver does not see that the drives are connected to a USB 3.0 hub. Parallels or Windows seems to immediately shift the drives to USB 2.0, perhaps before the Renesas driver even has a chance to see the drives. The Renesas driver is installed - nusb3mon.exe is visible in Task Manager, and the Reneseas Electronics USB 3.0 Host Controller and Root Hub are listed in Device Manager's "USB Serial Bus controllers" list. Additionally - even before I installed the Renasas 3.0 driver and enabled USB 3.0 in the Parallels hardware configuration, if these drives were connected directly to a built-in USB 3.0 port (on the USB 3.0 bus), they remained connected to the USB 3.0 bus when Windows VM started. And, they functioned 3 times as fast on those bus ports vs. the speed they achieved on the hub. They performed I/O faster than the maximum USB 2.0 speed. I did not think Windows 7 was capable of USB 3.0 without installation of a driver, and with USB 3.0 not yet enabled in the Parallels config - yet it seemed I was getting USB 3.0 speed from Windows. None of these behaviors is what I would expect. Is there something else I need to do to keep these drives connected to the USB 3.0 hub when Windows starts? Thank you.
Hi IDF, Try connecting your external device directly to Windows from Parallels Desktop menu > Preferences > Devices and check how it goes.
The external devices I am talking about are, and always have been, permanently assigned to Windows in Parallels > Preferences > Devices. That is what I meant in my second sentence above: "... Two of them are in NTFS format and set up in Parallels to be assigned permanently to my Windows VM when it starts."
