Expand Your Computer With Up To 4 USB 3.0 Ports
Backwards Compatible With USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 Devices
No Drivers Required -- Plug & Play
AC Adapter Providing Extra Power To All USB Devices
Transfer Rates Of Up To 5Gbps
This review is from: Vantec 4 Port SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Hub (Black)-- Edited: See bottom for updates! --
Oh man, I was eager for this one! My laptop (Asus N61Jv-X2, also bought here on Amazon) has only one USB 3.0 port. But USB 3.0 is so fast, it's become an absolute necessity for all my storage... I've now acquired quite the USB 3.0 collection, as well as a USB 3.0 PCIe card for my desktop. It's amazing! USB 3.0 is absolutely the next wave of storage tech. I have 2 Keydex 2.5" USB 3.0 enclosures, 1 Thermaltake BlacX 5G USB 3.0 HDD dock, an AData S102 8gb USB 3.0 Flash drive, and a generic Chinese USB 3.0 to Dual SATA HDD adapter (that the BlacX dock pretty much replaced due to reliability). OK, so there's my equipment.
I realized I needed more ports. I don't have much desk space and I was going to affix the hub to the side of my desk, and I didn't want some Chinese USB 3.0 knock-off like that USB-to-SATA adapter (which pretty much hosed itself after a few uses - the USB3 chip overheats). I bought this Vantec hub, it's great! It looked great, and the box... WOW. I really loved the quality put into it. Very sturdy, held together with real screws, rubber feet, solid connections, good quality adapter. Everything looked *stunning*.
Then I tried to use it. So far so good, it picked up all my devices, ran them simultaneously at full USB3 speed (benchmarking two 75MB/s HDDs, both negotiated about 65MB/s simultaneously). It was cool! I was happy. Then, about 2 hours later... the music playing off my 2.5" drive just stopped, along with a "doo-dong" and a USB-removed notification, saying my hub was unplugged ("USB Safely Remove" app). Huh? No, the drive didn't spin down or stop, it was still running... but Device Manager showed that there was nothing attached to either of its two virtual hubs (the one 4-port hub seems to be split into two 2-port devices). I unplug/reattach my hard drive... nothing. The hub? Nothing. I have to completely unplug the power and data to the hub, let it power down completely, then plug the hub power back in, then the data, and everything comes back up. For another 5 minutes. Then it dies again. Or if I plug in another USB 3.0 device... it just dies instantly.
Beta woes? I don't know. Since my lousy OEM (Asus) isn't keeping up-to-date with the latest NEC USB 3.0 drivers, I have to resort to third party drivers (station-drivers.com) to find the latest updates. I'm trying those now. I'll revise this review if anything better comes of it, but I'm only giving it a week... I was really hoping this would work, too! It's truly a beautiful and well designed piece of hardware! I'm just afraid to open it up to see if it's overheating.
-- Updated! 4/2/2011 --
Well, I contacted Vantec support, which was quite responsive and pretty helpful... not exactly verbose with their replies (really only one or two sentences), but at least there's no canned form-letter fluff! They directed me to a site with a firmware update (7.60 is the latest as of this writing), and after running that update and learning to be careful about bumping the USB "A" cables, the thing is working completely flawlessly right now. It's been working stable all night playing music, and earlier tonight I had not one, not two, but THREE USB 3.0 hard drives attached - two bus-powered 2.5" drives, and the powered BlacX HDD dock. Two drives were writing data via GbE at 60MB/s each, for a total burst speed of 120MB/s reported incoming from LAN. Everything worked perfectly, zero drop-outs. Exactly as USB should be! I'm just knocking one star for the cheap power brick that comes with it, as after switching to a more reliable 5v/2.5A adapter and comparing sizes (with the supposedly "2.0A" adapter provided with it), it's obvious that the bundled adapter can't provide 2.0A of power. Plus, the initial issues with reliability out-of-the-box. It still deserves 4/5 stars. :)...
This review is from: Vantec 4 Port SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Hub (Black)I have had this item for almost 2 months now, and it consistently connects and disconnects when I plug it into my USB port on my computer. This leads to an over-cycling of my external hard-drives disk and will wear them out to fast. It also just makes transferring data a plain pain in the behind. Very disappointed after giving it almost 2 months worth of testing. DO NOT BUY....
This review is from: Vantec 4 Port SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Hub (Black)Worked for the first couple days, after that it quit functioning. The annoying bright blue light was still on, but keyboard, mouse, nor usb thumb drive was detected....
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