Can I have too many HDDs connected to a single USB?

Nebell

2[H]4U
Joined
Jul 20, 2015
Messages
2,379
I'm using my PC as a Plex server and have quite a few HDDs connected to it.
2 M.2 SSDs
2 internal SSDs
2 external SSDs
2 external HDDs

I'm about to add 3 additional HDDs since I need more storage :rolleyes:
But I've been thinking about moving all external HDDs to my... erm, storage room (pun intended).
Can I connect everything to a USB 3.2 gen 2 hub and connect this hub to my PC with a long cable?
I currently have this set up but with only one HDD and no hub. It works fine and the transfer speed is only a bit slower due to the cable being some 15-20meters.
The difference will be 7 HDDs connected to a hub but usually only one HDD will be used.
Anything I should think about? Does the hub need to be powered or is a non powered hub enough? 6 of those 7 HDDs won't have their own power delivery as they are portable HDDs.
 
I would get a powered hub and just deal with the data throughput. When it comes to cable, there will be power losses with long cables.
 
Although you are supposed to be able to connect 127 usb devices to a single usb port, many usb 3 chipsets only support 32 devices on a single controller.

USB is also limited to a hub depth of 5, any 'active' usb extension cable will have repeater hubs in it, and many 7+ port hubs are actually 2 hubs in one.

For example this cable has 4 hubs in it, so if you hooked up basically any cheap 7 port hub only 3 plugs would work on it. If you got a cheap 4 port hub all 4 ports would work, or if you found a higher quality 10 port that is a single hub then all 10 ports would work. It is very difficult to find out if a hub is physically a single hub or two hubs in one though without buying it and finding out for yourself.

That being said, if you are using a passive extension cable or one that has less hubs in it you probably won't run into issues so long as you're not daisy chaining a bunch of 7 port hubs.

It should work fine for you as you don't have a ton of drives. I'd invest in a good powered hub personally but if your drives are self powered its not a huge thing. Some usb controllers are a bit shitty, I had issues hooking up a lot of powered external drives to some cheap usb pcie cards. If you're using a pcie card I've had good luck using the inateck KT4001 cards.

Also be aware that some powered external drives, WD Easystore/Elements show as a hard drive and as a SES device, seagate backup plus drives show up as a hard drive and a usb hub, further limiting how many drives you can have on a single usb controller.
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
I have a NAS and find it too weak to run Plex and burning subtitle images. Even my 9900k with all cores to 4.8 ghz is seeing 100% utilization and high bitrate movies refuse to work.
The long USB cable I use is active. 3 out of 4 HDDs will be powered by themselves. I might try to cheap hub, it's only €20.
 
I have a NAS and find it too weak to run Plex and burning subtitle images. Even my 9900k with all cores to 4.8 ghz is seeing 100% utilization and high bitrate movies refuse to work.
The long USB cable I use is active. 3 out of 4 HDDs will be powered by themselves. I might try to cheap hub, it's only €20.
Which one? Most should have quicksync now to do the re-encoding in hardware. As for yours - did you enable hardware encoding? Nvidia NVENC does great for H.264, and AMD's does well for H.265 (but not vice versa - short answer for a more complex explanation).
 
Which one? Most should have quicksync now to do the re-encoding in hardware. As for yours - did you enable hardware encoding? Nvidia NVENC does great for H.264, and AMD's does well for H.265 (but not vice versa - short answer for a more complex explanation).

Synology 218+. I use it to store my photos for the most part.
Burning subtitles takes a lot of CPU power. Anyway I ordered a couple of Toshiba N300 8TB HDDs and plan to install them in my computer case and see if I can deal with the sound. And since I already have quite a few USB external HDDs and non-powered USB hubs, I'll test that first and see if it works fine.
 
Synology 218+. I use it to store my photos for the most part.
Burning subtitles takes a lot of CPU power. Anyway I ordered a couple of Toshiba N300 8TB HDDs and plan to install them in my computer case and see if I can deal with the sound. And since I already have quite a few USB external HDDs and non-powered USB hubs, I'll test that first and see if it works fine.
Yeah that’s not a real NAS; pretty sure that doesn’t have Quicksync. Any of the atom equipped ones will - 4-5 bay plus.
 
Yeah that’s not a real NAS; pretty sure that doesn’t have Quicksync. Any of the atom equipped ones will - 4-5 bay plus.

it supports Quicksync. People use it to run Plex. But I find setting up Plex on a NAS way more complicated than on PC (which is more powerful and always on anyway).

Anyway, I tried using a non-powered USB hub and out of 4 HDDs, it showed only 1. The one that has its own power source. The other 3 were all non-powered.
Is it because the USB hub is non-powered?
Would this work? https://www.amazon.se/gp/product/B088FFNBT3

EDIT:
To answer my own question, the hub in question is actually a powered hub. I just didn't notice it has a power socket and I lost the adapter, which I just found, and suddenly all HDDs showed up.
So definitely a power delivery issue.
 
Last edited:
Although you are supposed to be able to connect 127 usb devices to a single usb port, many usb 3 chipsets only support 32 devices on a single controller.

USB is also limited to a hub depth of 5, any 'active' usb extension cable will have repeater hubs in it, and many 7+ port hubs are actually 2 hubs in one.

For example this cable has 4 hubs in it, so if you hooked up basically any cheap 7 port hub only 3 plugs would work on it. If you got a cheap 4 port hub all 4 ports would work, or if you found a higher quality 10 port that is a single hub then all 10 ports would work. It is very difficult to find out if a hub is physically a single hub or two hubs in one though without buying it and finding out for yourself.

That being said, if you are using a passive extension cable or one that has less hubs in it you probably won't run into issues so long as you're not daisy chaining a bunch of 7 port hubs.

It should work fine for you as you don't have a ton of drives. I'd invest in a good powered hub personally but if your drives are self powered its not a huge thing. Some usb controllers are a bit shitty, I had issues hooking up a lot of powered external drives to some cheap usb pcie cards. If you're using a pcie card I've had good luck using the inateck KT4001 cards.

Also be aware that some powered external drives, WD Easystore/Elements show as a hard drive and as a SES device, seagate backup plus drives show up as a hard drive and a usb hub, further limiting how many drives you can have on a single usb controller.
Good information! Thanks!
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
it supports Quicksync. People use it to run Plex. But I find setting up Plex on a NAS way more complicated than on PC (which is more powerful and always on anyway).

Anyway, I tried using a non-powered USB hub and out of 4 HDDs, it showed only 1. The one that has its own power source. The other 3 were all non-powered.
Is it because the USB hub is non-powered?
Would this work? https://www.amazon.se/gp/product/B088FFNBT3

EDIT:
To answer my own question, the hub in question is actually a powered hub. I just didn't notice it has a power socket and I lost the adapter, which I just found, and suddenly all HDDs showed up.
So definitely a power delivery issue.
No argument on the power - mine is a TR 1950X with 2080TI for NVENC, since most of my stuff is H.264 (and it doubles as a living room gaming pc). The older 2 bay ones didn't have QS - didn't realize they'd finally added it. I used that for a bit on mine and it worked well enough, but I needed the NAS space more for VMs.
 
Back
Top