Can a USB Hub corrupt hard drives?

Hi There Mac Forums,

I just starting using a Belkin Mobile HighSpeed 2.0 7 Power Hub with my 2013 MacBook Pro Retina Display (Mountain Lion 10.8.3) and 24" cinema display. The hub is plugged into the power outlet and the cinema display.

Last week, one of my two back up hard drives (WD MyPassport 500gig) took a nose dive, but it corresponded exactly with lending it to a friend who has a PC, so I chalked it up to a cross platform issue. (Was able to eventually get the important stuff off with Data Resuce 3).

Just now, the second hard drive (MyPassport 1T) gave me the same heart-wrenching message. Something like: Drive not readable by this computer... Initialize? Eject? Ignore?" Ugh!

Since this drive has not been anywhere new, I have narrowed it down to the next suspect... the USB hub. Can that be? Has anyone ever heard of such a thing? And if so, Is there anything to do beside toss the hub and hope to be able to recover the HD's. Also, will the HD's work again or are they no longer trust-worthy.

Many thanks for any help or advice!

Plug the HDD directly into your MBP to isolate the issue to the hub. If it works when connected to the MBP, then the hub might be failing and thus sending invalid/incorrect/insufficient information from the HDD for OS X to be happy with.

Raz0rEdge said:

Plug the HDD directly into your MBP to isolate the issue to the hub. If it works when connected to the MBP, then the hub might be failing and thus sending invalid/incorrect/insufficient information from the HDD for OS X to be happy with.

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Thanks for your response Raz0rEdge! Yes, I already plugged both HD's into the mac but I get the same message about not being able to read them... that's why I was wondering if the hub could be corrupting them all together?

It could be something with the USB Hub. Heard of that happening before. I have an older Belkin 7-Port but have never had issues with it. Yours sounds like a newer one. With 2 drives doing the same thing right after that Hub was put into use would sure make me wonder!

And then again, you might just have had two hard drive failures having nothing to do with the hub. I've seen a lot of Western Digital Passport drives fail and usually avoid them when in the market for an external hard drive. You might want to contact WD if those drives are in warranty (WD warranty is 3 years) and get a RMA for both of them. WD will replace the drives.

It seems like it might actually be the USB hub. Maybe too much power coming from the outlet? After i reformatted the first failed drive it was in working order when plugged into the MBP. To test, I plugged it back into the hub and it stopped working. Plugged it back in to the MBP and the disk mounted again. I never knew this could be an issue. Any any event, thanks for all the advice!