How can I tell which ports belong to my motherboards 'passthrough-able' USB controller

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Ch33rios

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Nov 29, 2016
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So I currently have an ESXi 6.5 server running on a SuperMicro X11SAE-F-O with a few VMs, the primary one being my Win10 desktop. I have passed through a 2 port PCIe USB3 card with success for my keyboard+mouse but I'm looking to add in a few other USB devices.

I was thinking I could pass through one of the controllers on the motherboard if available and when looking at the hardware tab for available PCI devices, I can see there is an ASMEDIA 1142 USB3.1 controller available for passthrough. My concern, though, is that I screw something up and when I reboot the system after enabling passthrough on the aforementioned controller, my USB thumb-drive which currently is my ESXi boot drive will cease to work.

Maybe I'm being paranoid but who knows :) In either case, my question is this: how can I tell which of the myriad of USB ports on my motherboard are related to THAT controller? LSPCI and LSUSB dont seem to provide information where I can correlate the two results...is there something else? I have USB devices I can plug in to the various front/back ports to test and look at logs if that would help. Just not familiar with where I need to really look in an ESXi install.

Of course, the other option is to just scrap my existing 2 port USB controller and move to a 4 or more port PCIe USB card, pass it through and be done (they are like $20 assuming I dont have to be extremely particular with the chipset/brand).

Thanks in advance!!

EDIT: As is typical, I believe I've managed to figure it out while creating a pic for this thread to help explain things. In the manual in the motherboard diagram there are 2 ports in the upper right that say USB but under them in tiny easily-overlooked letters it says 3.1. Sooooo I think its safe to assume that there is a separate controller just for those 2 USB3.1 ports. Perhaps already solved!
 
Last edited:

Evan

Well-Known Member
Jan 6, 2016
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Sounds like yes the answer, if you like can disable it in BIOS and if it still boots then you should be good (after re-enabling in BIOS and restarting of course)
 

Tom5051

Active Member
Jan 18, 2017
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You should be able to pass the 3.1 ports through just fine. Think they use red to colour code 3.1 and blue for 3.0.
If your not using the 3.1 ports for the host USB drive, then it will not cause any conflicts.
If you did happen to passthrough a usb port that the host was booting from, it would fail to boot. Simply put the thumb drive in a USB 2.0 port and reboot. Remove passthrough and replace usb drive in original port.
 
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Ch33rios

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Nov 29, 2016
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You should be able to pass the 3.1 ports through just fine. Think they use red to colour code 3.1 and blue for 3.0.
If your not using the 3.1 ports for the host USB drive, then it will not cause any conflicts.
If you did happen to passthrough a usb port that the host was booting from, it would fail to boot. Simply put the thumb drive in a USB 2.0 port and reboot. Remove passthrough and replace usb drive in original port.
Thanks! Worked just as expected :)