I have this Thunderbolt 4 hub connected my M1 MacBook Pro Max and 3 external TB drives connected (two OWC Mercury Elite Pro Thunderbolt 3 Dock Dual-Drive RAID Enclosures and one OWC ThunderBay 4 RAID 5 4-Bay External Storage Enclosure with Dual Thunderbolt 3 Ports. With these devices all connected at the same time I am experiencing constant drive spin up and down every 5 to 10 seconds. If I plug the drives directly into my MacBook, the constant spin up and down behaviour stops. I’m not sure what to do?
Hello skartz,
Thank you for reaching out on the forums! I am sorry to hear that you are running into issues with your USB4-HUB3A, but I would be happy to help diagnose the issues here.
First, can you confirm that you are trying to connect to your laptop using the included Thunderbolt 4 cable that came with your hub? We’ve seen issues arise when a third party cable is used.
Next, some steps we’ll want to take are to perform a power-cycle of the unit to reset its internal hub chipset. We’ve seen that this can often restore the hub back to a working state when one or more of its functions are not quite working. To do this, please follow these steps:
- Disconnect all USB peripherals and displays connected to the hub
- Disconnect the hub from host machine, then disconnect the power adapter from power
- Leave unplugged for 1 minute for power to dissipate
- Connect hub initially into power only
- Connect hub to host machine, then connect USB peripherals and displays, then test for functionality
Please let me know if this helps at all.
Lastly, I would recommend connect just one OWC enclosure to the hub at a time and watch behavior — this isolates whether the hub is overwhelmed by power/negotiation when all three are attached (try each downstream port). The USB4-HUB3A supports Thunderbolt/USB4 devices, but host and device interactions can still cause spinning if a device repeatedly renegotiates.
Thank you,
Evan
Plugable Technologies
www.plugable.com/support