CLARIFICATION: Powered Vs. Non-Powered USB hub for Airport Extreme Base Station

[aeronauticsrock]

I am looking for some clarification on this- I have search and read tons of threads with few definitive answers.

I want to plug in 2 USB 2.0 3.5" hard drives to a hub on my AE. Both hard drives have external power (no thumb drives, or 2.5" externals).

Do I need a powered hub?

I know that in the apple support docs, it only ever mentions powered hubs. But if neither hard drive is going to be requesting USB power, is this really necessary?

Thank you very much to anyone that can provide clarification on this.

 

[Gav2k]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Unpowered is fine as both drives being 3.5" are powered.

 

[Intell]

All USB devices request power over their USB power pins. Get the powered one, only just so you don't overload the Extreme's internal systems.

 

[aeronauticsrock]

The correct answer was:

The powered USB hub was not necessary. Both drive work completely fine with the unpowered hub.

 

[mtreys]

The correct answer was:

The powered USB hub was not necessary. Both drive work completely fine with the unpowered hub.

So regardless of how many ports on the hub, as long as each of the devices connected to it are powered on their own, the hub doesn't need to be powered?

 

[radiogoober]

So regardless of how many ports on the hub, as long as each of the devices connected to it are powered on their own, the hub doesn't need to be powered?

Correct. I ran a APE with 2 HDs and a printer on a non-powered USB hub. No issues ever.

 

[mtreys]

Correct. I ran a APE with 2 HDs and a printer on a non-powered USB hub. No issues ever.

Good info. Thanks!