Tried a cheap USB hub vs a powered one for my bench and its night and day

Ive been using this no-name $8 USB hub from amazon on my workbench for like 6 months to flash drives and hook up old hard drives. Kept having disconnects mid flash and drives not showing up half the time. Finally got annoyed enough to buy a powered Anker hub for $30 off a recommendation from a guy at a local shop. First thing I noticed was my external 2.5 inch drive spun up instantly instead of blinking for 10 seconds. Flashed a bios on a laptop yesterday without a single dropout. Makes me wonder how many of my past issues were just from that crappy hub. Anyone else waste time blaming the hardware when it was really the hub? What powered hubs do you guys trust for field work?

3 comments

3 Comments

holly_reed551mo ago

Did you check if that cheap hub was USB 2.0 or 3.0 under the hood? Some of those no-name ones claim 3.0 but run on a single channel that can't handle the power draw. I bet your old hub was starving the drives of both data lanes and voltage at the same time.

hannah4001mo ago

Yeah the single channel thing is real. I had a hub once that said USB 3.0 on the box but it turned out the chipset was only handling one data stream at a time. Plugged in two external drives and suddenly everything was crawling like USB 1.0. It was some brand I got off Amazon for 12 bucks and it died completely after a month anyway.

wesley_jones1mo ago

Honestly I used to think those cheap Amazon hubs were fine for basic stuff but this thread changed my mind. I bought a no-name one for like 8 bucks and it worked okay for a month with just a mouse and keyboard. Then I plugged in a flash drive and a card reader at the same time and the card reader kept dropping out every few seconds. Never thought about it being a single channel issue, just figured it was junk. Now I see why those hubs die fast when they can't even split the power right. Makes me wonder how many other people had the same problem and just blamed the drives instead.