Reliable firewire hub for Mac Mini?

Hi,

I have a Mac Mini with a single firewire port. That was fine for a while with just the iSight webcamera. Now, in addition I have a Western Digital external harddrive that I want to use for Time Machine, so have a need for a firewire hub.

I tried the Belkin AC-powered 6 port hub

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=193393

which would work for a while, but would stop working every so often. A power off and on of the Mac Mini was required to revive it. I got a replacement but it was no better. Belkin customer support were useless in answering power output per port. So, I returned it.

I'm guessing the hub is under powered to support both the camera and the external harddrive.

Does anyone has good experience with a particular brand of firewire hubs?

Cheers,

Marc

Aloha,
I have a Trendnet hub. It has 4 USB and 3 Firewire ports. I have every port in use. I also have firewire drives daisy chained and on the end of chain I have my HD video camera for importing. Never have had any problems.

http://www.pcconnection.com/IPA/Sho...23&srccode=cii_13736960&cpncode=07-57233184-2

To offer a contrary opinion, I have been using a powered Belkin 6 port Firewire hub for over two years now with no issues whatsoever. Mine LOOKS identical to the one in your link. Perhaps you just got a bad unit?

Hi,

Thanks for the responses. Do either of you have anything as power hungry as an external harddrive through the firewire hub?

I doubt it was a bad unit, the replacement one I got had the same behaviour.

Cheers,

Marc

marcher said:

Do either of you have anything as power hungry as an external harddrive through the firewire hub?

Click to expand...

I do. I run a G-Tech 250 GB Firewire G-Drive through the hub, along with an iSight camera. It all works very well together.

Power shouldn't be an issue - it is a powered hub. Dumb question, but I have to ask: you do have it plugged in, don't you?

ha ha - yeah, it was definitely plugged in. iSight and external HD into the hub, hub to the mac mini.

It would work for a while, then crap out.

Power off and on the mac mini and all comes back to life for a while.

Interesting to hear you (mac57) have exactly the setup I'm looking for....maybe a bad batch?

I'll look into the trendnet hub also.

Thanks again for the responses.

Cheers,

Marc