K62: smartctl and hdparm no longer work on ext USB HD

I tried 2 different WD ext HDs,
both work fine on K601.
Read temperature, issue standby before disconnect both work.
On K62 neither will work on any USB HD I have.
smartctl -d sat,12 -T verypermissive $dev
hdparm --prefer-ata12 -y $dev

Any ideas how to fix this?

I surely don't! But is there somewhere we could go to take diffs to get a log of the changes made between 601 and 62? I'm stuck with 601 for the moment, because I can't get 62 to work properly with external monitors on my laptops.