Granite Digital FireWire 800 Hub

[kumquat]

I bought one of these. And hooked up 4 2TB drives and attached it to my new Mini. The Mini kept crashing and freezing causing me to have to repeatedly manually force quit the Mini with its power button. When I restarted with the drives just daisy-chained to each other there were no crashing/freezing problems. I had a DVD burner daisy-chained to one of the drives because it's only 400. Also, the hub was extremely hot after just a short time (an hour or so) using it. Is this typical of these Granite FireWire hubs or did I get a dud?

 

[thedeske]

I bought one of these. And hooked up 4 2TB drives and attached it to my new Mini. The Mini kept crashing and freezing causing me to have to repeatedly manually force quit the Mini with its power button. When I restarted with the drives just daisy-chained to each other there were no crashing/freezing problems. I had a DVD burner daisy-chained to one of the drives because it's only 400. Also, the hub was extremely hot after just a short time (an hour or so) using it. Is this typical of these Granite FireWire hubs or did I get a dud?

It's possible the hub's power brick is faulty, but I'd try building from 2 drives to 3,4 etc to see if you can pin down where the stress happens.

I have one, but never used it with more than 3 drives. All were FW800 and powered going to 2009 and 2010 27in iMacs.

A FW 400 device in the chain it will slow the other devices to FW400. Never had any issue with heat on the hub. In my experience it works well. Typically I don't need more than 2 external drives for any length of time.

I had problems once with a mix of 2 - 3.5 powered and a bus powered 2.5. The 2.5 was capable of using a power adapter and that solved the problem.

FW800 can get a little twitchy with cheap cables. Some of the freebies that come with externals are just not worth unpacking.

 

[LeicaM8]

A HOT hub sounds like a very bad thing to me. In theory I can't see why any hub (firewire or usb) would even get warm as part of normal operations unless the ac converter was located inside of it. I've never owned a firewire hub so will have to defer to someone with experience, but I have yet to encounter an internally heated usb hub. Maybe I've just been lucky.
Personally, I'd be shouting for a RMA pretty quick, though, cuz I think by daisy chaining them you validated that the firewire boards in your devices are all working fine. Obviously the item in question isn't doing job it's labeled on it's box for and that alone would justify it irregardless of the temp situ.

R. in Mi.

I bought one of these. And hooked up 4 2TB drives and attached it to my new Mini. The Mini kept crashing and freezing causing me to have to repeatedly manually force quit the Mini with its power button. When I restarted with the drives just daisy-chained to each other there were no crashing/freezing problems. I had a DVD burner daisy-chained to one of the drives because it's only 400. Also, the hub was extremely hot after just a short time (an hour or so) using it. Is this typical of these Granite FireWire hubs or did I get a dud?

 

[kumquat]

I'm having a bad luck with electronics week except for my car alarm deciding to mysteriously work again after having been broken since October so I haven't really dealt with this since posting the OP.

Even with everything unplugged from the hub it was hot today when I took it off the shelf the drives sit on. The shelf is wood and the drives are warm, but not exceptionally so, and it's been pretty chilly here today. So, I don't know what the deal is. A powered USB 2 hub I have on the same shelf with two devices (a hard drive and a microphone) plugged in is cool to the touch.

In regards to the FireWire 400 DVD burner, is it not best that I have it plugged into the last device in the chain with all the other devices being 800?

I'm, frankly, a little nervous about trying to add any of the drives back to the FireWire hub; I had a USB 3.0 hub that malfunctioned and fried two hard drives in the process. What do you think? Try it again one drive at a time or just return it?

I really do need all 4 drives going at once, though, the DVD burner (and a Blue-Ray burner I haven't moved up here yet) can, of course, be plugged and unplugged as needed if I feel up for the minor inconvenience of doing so.

 

[thedeske]

Sounds like you need an RMA from Granite. Aside from the FW800 hub, I've purchased other items & cables from them. Good company in my experience.
Always possible you have a bad unit. We all agree the heat is not a good sign.

Good Luck