external usb hub

I need to get an external usb hub. The main need is to connect external hard drive. Right now all my usb ports are busy supporting keyboard and wacom tablet. When i try to plug-in western digital passport 250mb there is not enough power and the port become useless. I discovered that Dr. Bott T3Hub 2.0 doesn't need power supply and it works just fine with most hardware. My only concern is will it work with an external hard disk? If not what is the solution?

Thanks

Welcome to Mac Forums!

Clearly you will need a powered USB 2.0 hub. I just recently bought one myself, and after a lot of research bought this Belkin hub. I have been very pleased with it and would strongly recommend it.

It is externally powered, has seven USB2.0 ports, with two of them on the top for easy access. It is a bit of an odd looking creature, but very effective and VERY convenient.

I'll agree with mac57, you'll need a powered USB hub for external hard drives, especially passports that don't have their own power adapters.

I have three external hard drives, two with AC adapters and one WD Passport. I tried the Passport in a non-powered USB hub and it doesn't work at all. Once I got a powered hub, the Passport works without a problem.

I have a powered Belkin 4-port usb hub that I use to connect my printer, flash drive and external hard drive. Everything works great!

tmorgan1689 said:

I have a powered Belkin 4-port usb hub that I use to connect my printer, flash drive and external hard drive. Everything works great!

Click to expand...

Yes, in this case at least, Belkin makes a good product. This particular hub scored extremely well in objective tests, where the testing magazine (can't remember which one now) loaded up pretty much all the ports and then measured throughput on each one. They were syncing an iPod, copying files to a hard drive, reading from a USB stick... all at the same time. This particular hub fared very well in this heavy load test. That is what cinched the decision for me.