>> I'm trying to nail own a problem here, with my shiny new Maxtor 250Gb
>> USB 2.0 disk. Under 2.4 (vanilla, latest 21-preX and 21-preX-acY) the
>> disk will mount and talk nicely. As soon as any load hits it, e.g. a
>> single cp from my internal CD-ROM to the disk, the mahcine load will
>> sky-rocket and at some point within a few minuter hang the machine.

Here's a combined 2.4.21-rc8 patch, which includes:

  - two patches waiting for 2.4.22-pre ("i/o watchdog"
    and "SMP fixes"), as posted earlier;

  - another one, recently circulated for 2.5 ("short reads"
    and cleanup);

  - a bugfix for a hang that 2.4 + usb-storage seemed
    particularly ready to trigger.

I was able to reproduce a load+hang issue without this
patch; add the patch, the problem goes away and 2.4 acts
just as nicely (but not as quickly) as 2.5.

Please give it a try.

- Dave