Portable Hard Drives Disconnecting when connected to 10-Port Hub

Discontinued Products USB2-HUB10S
1

Just received my new Plugable USB 2.0 10 port hub 2 days ago, and began using it with 4 portable hard drives (Seagate and WD), 1 desktop (powered) external (WD My Book), my Mac keyboard, and a wacom pad attached.

Ever since I started using the hub, my computer seems to periodically kick off various portable hard drives occasionally, giving me the “this drive has not been property ejected” message, and one of the portable drives now seems to be corrupted and will not mount- even when I plug it into the Mac directly or a different computer (I’m running software recovery now). Although we backup data, losing a drive is still disastrous.

Does the Plugable Hub not have enough power to support all of these drives? Am I risking our data by plugging them in to this hub? Am I doing something else wrong? Please help.

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Hi Jamie,

Thanks for contacting us! The hub comes with a 2.5A power adapter, so there’s an assumption that users will have a mix of low power and high power devices (so that it averages to 250mA per port, rather than the USB 2.0’s max of 500mA on every port).

With 4 bus powered hard drives (some of which may go over the spec max of 500mA) and the Wacom tablet and keyboard, it may be that the setup is going over 2.5A supplied by the hub’s AC power.

To test the theory, if you remove one or two of the USB bus powered hard drives, does that eliminate the disconnection problems?

Once we find the cause of the disconnects, you should have no other problems with what you’re trying to do.

Thanks for your patience!
Bernie