I have just recently connected up my front panel USB ports to my motherboard. The ports seem to behave really strangely

I can plug in my mobile phone, digital camera to the front panel ports and they seem to work fine. However whenever I plug in my Sandisk 4GB Pen in one of the ports I get sluggish performance that is intermittent and on the other socket Windows reports the device as unknown and the USB Pen just turns off. Also whenever I try and use my WD My Book on these ports I get the same problem.

Whenever I place the MyBook or USB pen or any storage device on the other ports on the back panel, they seem to work fine. Same story when using any port on my PCI

What is wrong with my case ports or my connections. I have checked that they are plugged into the right pins and they are. I can't see whats going wrong

I've read that the rear USB ports have more power than the front and if the device powers off the USB, it's best to use the rear ports.

G-Paw your great, I have the same problem with my EPOX 9NPA board, I think your great!!

The front ports use 5v power - what voltage does the rear ports have then .

The USB pen uses power from the USB port but the external hard disk has its own power block to power it so surely where it plugs in is irrelevant!!

Would agree if the drive is self powered, then the power shouldn't have anything to do with it. I've run into this problem in the past, something won't work on the front but will on the rear port, but don't know why or how to fix it so I use the rear port when this occurs. Definitely irritating. Fir what ever reason there seems to be a lot of problems with USB ports/devices