USB Hub? advice... and, surge suppressor... Tripp Lite?

thank you!

I wonder how I never stumbled over that

CeriseR said:

thank you!

I wonder how I never stumbled over that

There are so many options, it's very easy to overlook

I have (the European version of) this one... it is a beast:
Amazon.com

wow, something with half the number of ports would work for me

I purchased a hub years ago and found several items did not work well with it

does yours work with an external DVD?
one of my issues, the short cords on the two USB plugs for the external USB make it a challenge

but if I could use it for iphone, ipod, microphone, camera, keyboard, mouse and speakers

heh heh, that is half the beast right there...

much easier than me having to figure out if my system supports something I need instruction installing ;-)

CeriseR said:

wow, something with half the number of ports would work for me

I purchased a hub years ago and found several items did not work well with it

does yours work with an external DVD?
one of my issues, the short cords on the two USB plugs for the external USB make it a challenge

but if I could use it for iphone, ipod, microphone, camera, keyboard, mouse and speakers

heh heh, that is half the beast right there...

much easier than me having to figure out if my system supports something I need instruction installing ;-)

Here's the 10 ports version:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081DYD25S The 16 ports version uses a 100 watts power supply that comes with a separate AC power cord, which makes it a better choice than the 10 ports version IMO even if you don't need more ports, as the latter version uses a wallwart that is limited to only 36 watts, which is not exactly overkill if you need to power 10 devices at once. The fact that these USB hubs use 12 volts DC for their input power makes them run more stable, as it helps to mitigate power fluctuations caused by voltage sag, and, their aluminum body also helps to better shield their electronics against the electromagnetic interference that is radiated by nearby devices (see: Faraday cage - Wikipedia ) while at the same time also it functions as a heatsink that can dissipate heat noticeably faster than a plastic body.

All my previous old laptops had an internal DVD writer in them so I never felt the need to buy an external one. In fact the last time when I touched an optical disc was several years ago, but I still have a bunch of old Plextor DVD writers next to my box of old floppy disks and QIC80 tapes somewhere in the basement. For the past 12 years and a half or so, for storing my media collection and backup files, I have been using 3.5 inch external HDDs like these:

You have to remember that the same port is shared with the devices on the hub.
If the port is 2.0 (480Mbps - 60MBps) and you have two devices on the hub, each one will have almost the half to it.
Best solution is to install a bracket to use the available internal USB ports or add a PCIe card.

Megahertz said:

You have to remember that the same port is shared with the devices on the hub.
If the port is 2.0 (480Mbps - 60MBps) and you have two devices on the hub, each one will have almost the half to it.
Best solution is to install a bracket to use the available internal USB ports or add a PCIe card.

It greatly depends on how your priorities are like. Usually I don't need to access more than two HDDs at once to be able to watch a few movies or listen to some music. If I keep them spinning, most of my HDDs make too much noise in the background, and then they keep consuming power for no reason at all, as I can instead just copy whichever files I need onto my internal SSD before I power them down. None of the HDDs that I have were ever designed to be kept spinning 24/7 anyway in the first place, so keeping them powered down when not in use nor planned to be used for at least some reasonable period of time is a better idea on general with these. I know I could have bought the NAS or enterprise type of HDDs, but these were loads cheaper in comparison at the time when I bought them. For me, having more available storage capacity to work with was more important than having a shiny expensive NAS enclosure to look at with not much of my budget left over for me to still be able to put a few extra HDDs inside it. And besides, if two computers need to transfer large amounts of data from the same NAS, they BOTH use up network bandwidth. Whereas in my setup, only the one that accesses my shared folders uses up network bandwidth, the other one uses up USB 3.0 bandwidth. So, to some non-negligible degree, I can do load balancing between the network and the USB, and can do so on both computers when needed. In addition, I can do easy hotswapping on each computer's USB hub, also when needed. (USB external HDDs are highly portable hotswappable devices.) Finally, I should add that each one of my two Asus RT-AX92U routers has one USB 3.0 port, I have these routers hooked up to each other via Wired Backhaul, and, lo and behold, the transfer speeds I get when I plug one of my USB 3.0 portable HDDs into each one of these babies is more than respectable enough for what I need, so... to hell with Synology.