Question Sabrent 7 Power USB Hub Ability to use certain ports and some are unusable

[bikemanI7]

Wondering How Come i can't use 4 of the 7 ports on this Sabrent Powered USB 3.0 Hub? If i use 3, it doesn't complain, if i plug in a 4th item into Port 3 of 7, then it complains not enough power

 

[helpstar]

power supply plugged in?

 

[bikemanI7]

Yes power adapter plugged in

 

[helpstar]

which devices did you plug in?

 

[bikemanI7]

WD My Passport 2tb self powered external

WD MY Passport 2tb self powered second drive

Xbox GamePad Wired version

On machine itself

Have Logitech G Pro X headset, Logitech g513 keyboard, g502x mouse connected to rear of keyboard, second cord direct to PC, and USB ups battery backup USB cable

Typically The Headset is plugged into Front USB 3.0 port

The Remaining items are plugged into the 4 Blue Rear USB ports Including the Hubs extension cable, i can see if the cable reaches without the extension if need be

 

[Misgar]

Wondering How Come i can't use 4 of the 7 ports on this Sabrent Powered USB 3.0 Hub? If i use 3, it doesn't complain, if i plug in a 4th item into Port 3 of 7, then it complains not enough power

The Sabrent web site shows a number of different USB 3.0 hubs. Which particular model is yours?

If your Sabrent hub comes with a mains brick, check its power rating. It might have a 12V DC output (which gets converted down to 5V inside the hub) or it might have a 5V DC output.

Either way, multiply the DC voltage and current figures on the PSU label, to arrive at the total number of Watts available.

If you connect a bunch of power hungry devices to the powered hub, e.g. several 2.5" laptop hard disks, each requiring 5V at 0.6A (3.0W), they might overwhelm a "low power" mains brick rated at 5V and 2.0A (10W). You'd only need 3 laptop drives (at 3W each) to get close to the limit of a 10W PSU. I know your WD desktop drives have their own (12V?) PSUs.

There's a vague possibility there's a power limit circuit built inside the hub, to stop you from burning out an inadequately rated (cheap) power regulator chip. If this is the case, you'll have to buy a better designed hub.

In addition, some USB devices don't work well with USB hubs (especially really cheap ones) but work fine when plugged directly into a motherboard port. I don't think this has anything to do with power draw, but instead is some incompatibility in the hub's data splitter implementation. Anyone?

I find USB-A power meters useful when fault finding.

Also available in USB-C (but often more expensive).

You can measure the current draw of any device attached to the power meter whilst the device is working and check the voltage too.

If you have a laptop charged from USB-C, you can see if the charger is working normally and providing 20V an 3.25A (65W) or 20V at 5.0A (100W) on a typical unit.

WD My Passport 2tb self powered external

WD MY Passport 2tb self powered second drive

I'd be cautious about connecting desktop (or laptop) USB hard drives to a hub, purely because sometimes the leads get tugged or nudged and the data connection to a drive is broken.

This doesn't matter if you're not transferring files if this happens, but you might end up corrupting something when you're writing data to the drive.

I've stopped using USB-A and USB-C hubs with my laptops because I'm continually nudging the cables, plugging/unplugging things. Sometimes a USB lead momentarily breaks connection. Not so much of a problem in a desktop scenario if the hub is tucked away behind the PC out of harm's way.

 

[bikemanI7]

My Sabrent USB hub is model HB-BUP7

7 Port 36W
Includes 36W/12/3a power adapter

The hub is positioned on my desk underneath Monitor stand, behind keyboard and mouse location on desk, typically doesn't get in the way too much, but i only typically have all the drives connected when i need to update files on the drive.

Like for example i purchase a newer Music album with my MS Bing Rewards Amazon Gift card, then i typically plug in as many drives as i can, and update the single folder on each drive.

Of course i can plug some in directly next time i do, and see if i have a better experience in that regard

Though this hub does work better than my previous really cheap one, where i couldn't even have 2 devices plugged into old 4 Port hub without it complaining not enough power

 

[Misgar]

Your Sabrent USB hub might benefit from a firmware update:-

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/sabrent-7-port-hub-firmware-update-is-it-safe.3829985/

Chances are the "virus warning" was a false positive, due to Sabrent's web site not having the correct credentials. Any downloads that are not mainstream and "ping" - unknown software, virus warning!

In such situations, I use an old, spare "sacrificial" PC to perform the dowload and update. That way if there really is a virus, it doesn't affect my main machines.

If in doubt, upload the Sabrent firware update file to www.virustotal.com for investigation, before running any executables.

Just make sure you visit the Sabrent web site and not some third-party scam site offering difficult to find drivers, in return for your email address.

When I'm really suspicious, I open Windows Sandbox (in Windows xx Professional) or a Virtual Machine in Hyper-V and download the file in a more secure (isolated) fashion.

You probably won't be able to update the hub in a Sandbox or VM, unless you've enabled USB port hardware passthrough. I've never performed USB passthrough, but I have tried GPU passthrough successfuly in a VM.

 

[bikemanI7]

Well just checked Sabrent website don't even see the Firmware update available for download, just the Manual.

I can setup Windows Sandbox though to download it, as i used Sandbox mode a little bit in the past on my Windows 11 Pro Install

Anyhow will get it all sorted in due time here.