Hoping someone here can help me find a solution. I’m using two 4TB GDRIVE USB drives to wrangle footage on a feature film set. I tend to use LACIE and WD drives for this, but G-Tech is what I’ve been provided with this time. I have a Transcend USB 3.0 Hub which has never let me down before, but inexplicably, write speeds on the drives slow to 4MB/s when connected to the hub. Off the hub, and I’m up to 165MB/s. I’m using a 2015 Macbook Pro, so USB ports are in short supply. I’m pretty much forced to use one drive at a time (one USB port for the drive, and one port taken up by a camera card reader), which is not ideal when your job involves verifying that you have an exact backup of all the data. Has anyone else had this bizarre issue before? Did you find a solution?
Is the hub you’re using a bus powered hub or does it have external power? It is highly recommended when using external drives to not use hubs at all but in the event that you need to it is best to use an externally powered hub.
Other than that we haven’t seen any incompatibilities with any particular hubs/chipsets before.
The hub is externally powered, even though technically it doesn’t need to be, since both drives are already connected to their own power source.
I’ve tried it both ways, plugged in and bus-powered, with the same result. Blackmagic Disk Speed Test shows sub-2.0 speeds with the hub, regular speeds without. My workflow needs the use of two drives at a time, so I’m just going to have to buy another brand of 3.0 hub and hope for the best.
