I’m thinking about hooking up a usb dual bay hard drive enclosure to the hub which’ll have all my movies stored on the 2 drives. Will the hub be able to see both drives in the enclosure? I know that for esata connection you’d need to have port multiplier supported on the device the enclosure is connected to, but what about regular usb connection? Has anyone done something similar to this?
It shouldn’t be a problem, although there are a lot of different devices like that.
I’m VERY PLEASED with the “WD 2TB Elements” USB drive. It turns ON and OFF automatically. Combined with the WDHUB gives me 3TB total (about 400 DVD images).
I recommend something simple like that unless you need more than 3TB.
*If you get a NAS, consider something like a D-Link or similar and hook it up to the NETWORK instead of your WD. Now it’s available to anything on the network so you can copy files to it from a PC (or even access remotely).
NAS devices really vary and can get expensive whereas a simple USB drive is cheaper. Not all USB drives turn off automatically so I really must recommend the WD Elements version.
thanks for the reply photonboy. My original plan was to get a NAS but comparing it to the hd enclosure the price is at least 3x as much. With the enclosure I could see its content over the network once plugged into the hub, just a matter how much faster is the NAS box. The other good thing with the enclosure is I could disconnect from the hub and connect it to my laptop to transfer files over much quicker via usb vs wireless.
I’m planning to get a Rosewill R2-JBOD from newegg and will find out if both drives will be seen by the hub, which I think it should like you said.
It is my understanding that the Hub will not work with USB hubs - I tried it myself and confirmed it. So, you need to figure out how the dual drive enclosure will connect to the Hub. If it has two separate USB connectors, then all is well. One to the front USB port on the Hub, one to the back port. Otherwise, if the enclosure uses an internal hub with one USB connection, you likely will have problems.
I just looked at the pictures on Newegg - there is one USB connector on the enclosure you are looking at, so that means it must have a hub inside.
My WNDR3700 router has USB shared drive port and will work with HUBS!. Im thinking to connect additional storages to that thing.
hmm that’s not good news. I’ll get the enclosure in a couple of days to test it out. My router also has usb port so I can plug it in there if the first option fail.
so I got the hard drive enclosure deliverd last night, installed two 2tb wd green drives and hooked it up to the hub usb port. The hub only recognized one drive doesn’t matter which usb port I plug it into so hjones4841 you are right.
I tried plugging the enclosure to the usb port on my netgear’s wireless router and was able to see both drives on my laptop. The transfer rate from my laptop to the enclosure is only 3.5 MB/s versus 5.0 MB/s if I plugged a single external drive to the hub’s usb port.
I ended up giving the enclosure with two 2tb drives to my sister to be used on her computer and I’m looking for another storage solution. Trying to decide between NAS or WHS. WHS I like because the drives can be formatted NTFS and accessible from any pc. The NAS however has it’s own format and not as accessible but is easier to mantain.
Anyone has suggestion either way?
