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USB Type-C hubs (Power)
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad A475 and want to buy a Type c usb hub, but i'm
a little unsure how the power side of things come in. Of course if i want to run say 3 HDD off the hub i suspect (correct me if i'm wrong) I will need to provide it with more power than the laptops bus can provide on it's own. So this being the case are there any good quality (live in uk and don't want to spend over £50 if poss) hubs that come with a psu, if not what kind of PSU do i uy i don't want to buy some junk from the far east that goes bang at the drop of a hat. Any other help or advice would be more than welcome. Jim |
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USB Type-C hubs (Power)
Jim wrote:
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad A475 and want to buy a Type c usb hub, but i'm a little unsure how the power side of things come in. Of course if i want to run say 3 HDD off the hub i suspect (correct me if i'm wrong) I will need to provide it with more power than the laptops bus can provide on it's own. So this being the case are there any good quality (live in uk and don't want to spend over £50 if poss) hubs that come with a psu, if not what kind of PSU do i uy i don't want to buy some junk from the far east that goes bang at the drop of a hat. Any other help or advice would be more than welcome. Jim It's too bad articles like this weren't written in a way so that a user could understand what the equipment in hand is doing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_hardware#Power 5V @ 3A would come close to running three 2.5" HDD in compact USB enclosures. With the right brand of SSD, you could get away with 5V @ 1.5A for three SSDs (Samsung, not a Kingston with a Sandforce controller). I measure my SSDs with my ammeter, before tethering them off USB ports, so there won't be an overload. ******* Now, this thing has two USB-C connectors, and three blue USB3 connectors. https://www.diamondmm.com/product/di...pe-3-port-hub/ The laptop side connector, carries data from laptop to three ports. It also allows charging current to flow upwards to the laptop. The second type-C port is for connecting a charger. I presume this can power the downstream ports, but can't be sure of it. This item can negotiate USB-c power and has a 5V @ 3A option which might be enough to run the three USB3 ports. While it is doing its thing, the laptop should be disconnecting its VBUS power. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16812923003 The history on USB-C cabling is not good - an engineer at Google went out of his way to test cables from Amazon and found non-compliant ones. I think his laptop got damaged while doing the testing. Smart cables are supposed to have a comms chip in the cable, to carry out the negotiation. I have no idea how each device knows its role, and knows what the user is trying to do. Summary: I wouldn't touch your idea with a barge pole! Not your fault. Just a failure of the USB PD spec to offer the "reassurances necessary to buy stuff". I can't tell what I'm getting, can't do basic re-engineering of the products I'm seeing. Can't tease out a spec I can trust. I would connect *one* drive, do my thing, do a Safely Remove, or whatever. I have one USB3 "item", where when you do a Safely Remove, followed by unplugging it, the "dirty shutdown indicator" increments by 1, meaning the device really wasn't happy, even though it was "told" what was about to happen. And this is the kind of behavior I *don't* need. Then when the thing breaks later, I'll be going "hmmm - my fault or their fault". I can't meet your price target. Seems like "Apple pricing" abounds. Nobody wants to bundle the adapter with the hub, because then their tier pricing would be too high, and they'd sell zero of them. This seems to be the nature of whizzy/bloated specs. I can envision marketing people doing lines of coke off a coffee table while writing this one up. It's all very clever, but as I've explained before, people buy "garbage" based on price. If you can't hit decent pricing targets, your product will be a flop. You can tell from the number of products with zero reviews, how well this is working. What I'm seeing so far, seems to be 2x to 3x too expensive, and part of the root cause, is it's taking more than one silicon chip to build it. The integration level isn't there to make the price drop lower. Two devices (hub and AC adapter) will each have "negotiation chips" to "talk" over the cable. And that's a waste. I understand Bill Gates wants to buy this setup, but has to wait for his allowance next month. A question for you. Does Lenovo offer a dock for that laptop ? Would a NAS work for you ? Say, a NAS with multiple drives (over Ethernet) plus *one* drive at a time connected to the laptop for portability. Paul |
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