How many HDD run off powered HUB?

[badger906]

im making myself a sort of NAS box, but without the NAS for now lol

I will be mounting 4 3.5" HDD's in a hot swap box im making, and converting them to usb. For backing up purposes, without RAID.

Instead of having 4 usb cables coming out, i though about building a powered usb hub inside, and having just the one cable come out.

Just wondering if theres any part of my plan that ive not thought about!

 

[Corazon]

Um...even if this works, how would your computer be able to address 4 different disks over a single USB cable? Short of writing your own transport protocol and special drivers to implement it, I don't see this happening....

 

[pbcopter]

@Corazon

I have a Belkin 7 port powered USB hub (single USB cable to the computer) with 5 USB hard drives connected.

Each USB port can support 127 devices if power is not an issue.

I'm not sure of what you are saying.

 

[Corazon]

Oh...now I get it. I thought that the OP somehow wanted to address his 4 drives as one single USB drive...I kinda feel silly now.

 

[badger906]

Got me worried then! I want them to be 4 separate drives.

I'm turning into a backup freak, so ill back up on all 4 drives, then remove 2 and keep them at my place of work, and return them monthly lol.

Just started converting my entire blu ray and dvd collection to mp4 or avi and worried what will happen if my NAS system goes plop!

Sent from my BlackBerry 9900 using Tapatalk

 

[pbcopter]

@Corazon

I see what you meant now. Certainly a valid interpretation.

 

[SledgeDG]

You had me worried there for a second, Corazon
Nah it's perfectly OK the way the op plans to do that.
USB can address up to 127 devices (IIRC) but the power transmitted through USB is very limited so an externally powered hub is the way to go.
Just make sure to use a high quality USB cable at least between computer or box.
And make sure you build some means of cooling ( like a couple fans...2 in one out) into that box. 4HDDs in confined space might generate some heat

-DG