Having just gone thru a bunch of USB issues in the last 48 hours, I’m prompted to share my experiences.
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I have 5 hubs hooked up to one machine. They are all 7 port hubs, and all of them have a power supply. 3 are USB 3.0 and two are USB 2.0.
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Yes, I have a lot of USB stuff, but I don’t have 35 items. (That is, not all 7 of the ports on each hub are full. An average of 4 ports are full on each.)
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But here is what I discovered, at least as it applies to my setup:
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1) it pays to have -different- (brand or model) hubs all the way around. This seems to help the system keep everything straightened out, and not confuse one item with another. (Yeah: I know, it -shouldn’t- make any difference, but like the old issues with some Firewire enclosures, it does make a difference.)
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2) individual ports each have different addresses (of course, or it would be chaos) but some >software< depends on those addresses (not just the the OS) and live plugging a device from one port to another may cause that device to stop working (being recognized.) Again, a reboot is in order, or you may need to delete, and re-add the device to the affected software.
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3) adding a hub, or likewise moving it around, may require a reboot as well. Hubs seem to be recognized by the OS at boot time. So, plugging in a hub and getting no activity on it may simply require a reboot.
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4) some items may be hot-pluggable and some may not be.
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5) running a hub without an external power supply is skating on thin ice: it will work fine… until it doesn’t. (Usually fails when you really REALLY need no problems. Somebody’s Law, I think.)
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6) Speaking of fails: hubs -will- fail, either a port at a time, or the whole bloody thing at once.
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7) buying cheap, no-name hubs is a gamble. At the very least, read the reviews, and if you find one with strong favorables, make sure there are hundreds of them, not ten.
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8) leave hubs plugged in, and powered on. Don’t be switching them on and off with power strip.
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9) weirdness may happen with your computer ( not booting, for example) if a hub or something connected to it, is going out, or gone. If you experience this, try unplugging your hubs as a troubleshooting technique.
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Brands: I like Anker products (not just their hubs, either). Amazon Basics.
Belkin is usually, but not always, good.
A good, reliable USB 3 hub will cost about $40. Yes, you can get them for less; I’m saying “don’t.”
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As I understand it, USB hubs require one controller chip for every four ports. The good ones will have that; the cheap ones will not, and will choke when you plug in the 5th device.
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FWIW. YMMV. HTH.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having just gone thru a bunch of USB issues in the last 48 hours, I’m prompted to share my experiences.\u00a0I have 5 hubs hooked up to one machine. They are all 7 port hubs, and all of them have a power supply. 3 are USB 3.0 and two are USB 2.0.\u00a0Yes, I have a lot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mac-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":364,"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions\/364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valleau.art\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}