I have a self-powered 4-port USB hub. It's about as cheap as can be. I got it 5-6 years ago at the register of an office supplies store. I think it was $1 and it has no brand name.
I use the hub to connect two external hard drives to my laptop at all times. One of the drives is portable and the other one isn't. I recently read about somebody's USB hub crashing and frying the devices that were connected to it. Is it possible if this thing malfunctions for it to supply too much power or something? Can it damage my hard drives or laptop and if so, is there a different type of USB hub that won't do that?
I'm using Windows 8 by the way. Thanks.
Best Answer
A voltage spike from the hub could damage or destroy any USB device connected directly to it. This is true for both self-powered and bus-powered devices, because the spike may occur not only in the power connection but also in the data connection itself.
That being said, this is rather unlikely. Less unlikely are brownouts due to insufficient power, which could result in data corruption or other errors.