Mac Mini and USB 2.0 hubs (hubs stop working within a month)

Question

Level 1

19 points

Mac Mini and USB 2.0 hubs (hubs stop working within a month)

I have an aluminum Mini running OSX 10.6.6 (Snow Leopard). With only 4 USB ports, I have need of a USB hub to accommodate my external drives and other peripherals: keyboard/mouse, camera and iPhone have to use the existing ports in the Mini (difficult access to ports due to space limitations), leaving one port for up to 4 external drives (older drives 40-60gb used for backup and extra storage).

I have problems using powered USB 2.0 hubs with this computer; I have 'burned out' 2 hubs since buying the Mini in February. They just flat out stop working, though they still show power (the power indicator light on the hubs); no peripheral is recognized when plugged into the hub (which worked fine for about a month). I can unplug the 'must use Mini ports' (camera, iPhone, charger, etc) and the peripheral drives are recognized and work normally when plugged directly into the Mini ports.

One hub was a Belkin 4-port hub (about 1 year old) and the other was a GE 3-port hub with several flash card readers (19-in-1 card reader), also about a year old. Is there any reasonable explanation why powered hubs would suddenly stop working, related to use with the Mac Mini 2010 aluminum version?

I had worse problems with the USB ports in an old (~2006) Mac Mini (out of warranty), where the USB ports in the Mini stopped working, which is partly why I bought the new mini. In light of this tidbit, (be honest, please) are there known issues with Mac Minis and USB?

Mini Core2 Duo (ex imac G5, pbG4 "TiBook", iMac DVSE, performa, pb1400, to SE30), Mac OS X (10.6.6), too many computers in my house

Posted on Apr 1, 2011 2:05 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Asatoran

Level 4

2,532 points

Apr 1, 2011 3:16 PM in response to blick

...I have need of a USB hub to accommodate my external drives...leaving one port for up to 4 external drives (older drives 40-60gb used for backup and extra storage)....

Since you say 40-60GB, I'm assuming these "external drives" are hard drives. And if so, then are the hard drives "self-powered" or "bus-powered"? The USB hub might not be able to supply enough power for one power hungry hard drive, let alone 4. Me personally, I do not like USB bus-powered hard drives. The specification for USB only allows for 500mA. While Macs and other PCs will provide more, many USB hubs do not. (And a non-powered hub would probably be barely be able to supply the max 500mA since it has to get it from the computer.) So bus-powered USB drives are on the border-line, unless you can get a hub with confirmed higher power (or plug directly into Mac.) Use self-powered drives, preferably Firewire. (Firewire can daisy-chain so no need for a hub.)

Otherwise, I don't really know why you'd have such bad luck with USB hubs. But the mention of "external drives" brought the hard drive power issue immediately to mind.

Reply

Answer 2

blick Author

Level 1

19 points

Apr 1, 2011 4:27 PM in response to Asatoran

Each of the external drives has its own power supply; I generally only use one drive at any one time, but on rare occasions I have powered up more than one to confirm or transfer files. I don't leave any of those drives on when not in use, and when everything is working I properly eject/unmount them before turning them off.

There have been times when I powered up a drive connected to a powered hub and both the hub and the drive indicated activity but the drive didn't mount. On those occasions the drives sometimes would not appear in Disk Utility, and other times would appear, but would not be "mountable". I didn't know what the best way to deal with that was, so I would just turn the drive off, hoping the lack of mounting on the desktop meant no real drive activity was occurring and I wouldn't risk data loss or drive damage. So far all the drives seem to work fine when plugged directly into the back of the mini.

The main external hard drive I was using when the Belkin hub failed (iomega 40g) is USB 2.0 only (no firewire). I have another drive that is only firewire (la cie 60g)... so it wasn't a factor. Two other external drives are ACOM, one 40g one 120g, and then there's my old iMac G5 disk (display fizzled and everything but the disk recycled through Apple's recycling program) which is mounted in an external enclosure and is part of the USB contingent, but is not being used for anything but backup (all three both USB 2 and FW400 capable). (I know, too many toys... but why throw them out?)

The USB hubs both had their own power supplies, too, and I never used them without power (though I tried it as part of troubleshooting, before reading the Apple article on USB and power requirements). Other USB devices that only work when plugged into the mac directly are my Epson Stylus CX4800 all-in-one, and my Radio Shark.

So, whaddya think? Should I risk buying another powered USB hub or just live with plugging in peripherals to one available USB port (through a short USB 2.0 extension) and only use one at a time? That would be a bit of a pain, but if there are no issues you've heard of with Mac USB ports (several unanswered questions in the Mini Support forums here involving USB and peripherals, I noticed), what else would explain the seemingly short lives of USB hubs?

Oh, here's something I just remembered: the last time the Belkin hub was working (last night), I had my Radtech BT mouse charger cable plugged in (not charging, mouse not attached) along with two of the external hard drives, and my Fuji camera USB cable. I got an error message onscreen (on the Mini) that a drive had been improperly ejected (or put away?), yet the hard drive in question was still mounted on the desktop. I looked at the hub, and the loose ends of the charger and the camera USB cable were touching. Could that have caused the error (and maybe the hub to fail)? (Edit: the camera cable I think was plugged into the mini's one available port; 3 external drives and the mouse charger were plugged into the hub, _but only one drive powered up and in use (3rd edit)_. The camera end of its USB cable contacted the mini-plug end of the mouse charger... could that have short-circuited the hub? +That wouldn't explain the failure of the GE hub a couple weeks before... but I don't know if any of this is connected, so to speak--2nd edit.+)

Message was edited by: blick

Message was edited by: blick

Message was edited by: blick

Reply

Answer 3

Asatoran

Level 4

2,532 points

Apr 1, 2011 5:36 PM in response to blick

IDK, perhaps you're plugging/unplugging so much, the minute amount of electrical surges through the USB port is more than the USB chips can take? (Yes, that's really a stretch. Maybe you ticked off a voodoo priest and he placed a curse on you. 😉 )

My personal setup is a 2009 Mini with a bunch of things attached as well. A Newer Technology Mini stack hard drive which has a USB hub and two Dell Monitors with built-in 4 port USB hubs. In addition to the USB mouse and keyboard, a Wacom Bamboo Tablet, USB Mimo 7" monitor, Casio camera, web cam, USB sound card (for microphone input,) Sony smartphone (syncing daily,) iPad1, UPS USB monitoring cable and recently an Elgato TV tuner. So three powered USB hubs in service for almost two years and no issues.

Note that I have no USB hard drives. I have 5 Firewire hard drives, but the only USB drives are several flash drives and occasionally a memory card reader. Even my 3 printers are networked, not USB. I gave up USB hard drives a long time ago due to the slow speed. Dealing with video files and virtual machines (20-200GB) is just not practical with USB drives.

IMHO, such small hard drives (40GB, 60GB, 120GB) just dump them. You can buy a 1TB USB hard drive for under $100. A 2TB Firewire drive is under $200. (I got an Iomega one for Time Machine for $170 at Amazon.) It's not worth dealing with multiple small, slow hard drives. It may seem like a waste, but consider that many hard drives will fail after 3-5 years, so replacing them now makes sense if you consider that you already got your value from the hard drives.

Or think of it this way: you mentioned 4 drives with a total of 260GB. Even one 320 or 500GB drive can take care of all that data _+while only using one USB port+_. Isn't that a good enough reason to get a new, larger capacity drive? But if you're going to do that, then why not make it a Firewire drive which not only is faster, but also uses zero USB ports, thus freeing up the precious few USB ports of the Mini. 🙂

Reply

Answer 4

Asatoran

Level 4

2,532 points

Apr 1, 2011 5:42 PM in response to Asatoran

Additional info: sorry, I realized I forgot to mention that the reason why I'm recommending replacing the old drives is perhaps one or more of the drives has an electrical short and is causing damage to the USB hubs. Or even one of the other USB devices. (At least, one of the other self-powered USB devices.) So if you're gonna try replacing things, the hard drives are good candidates to start with.

Reply