I have 3 HDD's. I have recently acquired a 4 port, powered, Belkin USB hub. When the hub is attached directly to my Mac, all 3 HDD's are recognised. However, when I attach the hub to the USB port on my Airport Extreme, results are random - at best, 1 of the 3 is recognised. Any ideas?
airport extreme-OTHER
What Airport model is this? Older models may not cope with more than one item plugged into the USB socket. My own Extreme handles two printers via a hub (I haven't tried it with disks) but the older Express which it replaced would only ever recognize one of the printers.
Hi Roger, model number is A1408.
Nothing in the literature and online suggests that this shouldn't work, but then again............
Yours is the fifth generation model, so reasonably up to date. The manual starts by saying 'disks', but then only talks about connecting one disk. I don't have any further information and my own AE is older, so I can't really try this out. However I have a nasty feeling that it may not want to handle all three disks at once. Unless someone who can try this out chips in, I can only suggest trying an Apple Store 'Genius' if you are in a position to be able to do this.
For what it is worth, Apple's support document mentions that you can connect "several" hard drives to the AirPort Extreme using a USB hub. The usual vague details are here:
Uses for the USB port of AirPort Time Capsule, AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express
But, the USB port on the AirPort Extreme is USB 2.0. The port on any recent Mac computer is USB 3.0. We don't know what the Belkin hub might be....but it is probably 3.0 if it is a current or recent model.
Yes, USB 3.0 is "supposed" to be backwards compatible to 2.0. But, I'm not convinced that Apple's USB 2.0 port firmware is fully compatible, and I'm not aware of any firmware updates dealing with this issue. So, that is where I think the issue lies.
I wish I had a good answer. I did solve one recent issue with 2 new Lacie drives by buying a cheap USB 2.0 Dynex hub at Best Buy. It works fine with the AirPort Extreme. A much more expensive 3.0 hub....that was supposed to be 2.0 compatible.....did not work with the AirPort Extreme. Sorry, I don't have a 3rd drive handy to test to see if three drives will behave.
Sometimes, you just have to experiment.
USB Hub issues - Airport Extreme
