In the process of upgrading and migrating from a eMac OS10.3.9 to a Mini OS10.5.8 with all its peripherals I discovered that a USB Power Hub was causing the fan in the MINI to turn on when I put it to sleep. If the Hub is not accompanied by a power plug there is no problem. This only happens on the mini, I have other macs, PC's and Linux boxes that do not have a problem with a power hub, or this power hub. A conversation with Apple support revealed that it can happen with SOME hubs, so I'm wondering if there are any portable USB power Hubs that would be recommended?

The only peripheral that was plugged into the hub at the time that the problem revealed itself was a Logitech RF Dongle for a MX Revolution mouse. The mouse will not work with the Dongle plugged into the hub if the power is not connected but does work if I place the Dongle on a USB extension cable.

I've had good luck with these hubs (I have three) and if I swap it with another the results are the same.

Any suggestions would be welcomed.

After a number of hub purchases over the past couple years, my best experiences have been with this Belkin unit.

Too bad Firewire never had a chance at taking over from USB.

I have had consistently good results with IOGear hubs.

I will second Mississauga's, recommendation of the Belkin Hi-speed 7 port hub. Mine has functioned flawlessly, even when I've chained a second hub to it.

No problems no fan use.

It's external power brick is required.

I wonder if your hub isn't actually drawing power from the Mini?

Thanks for the tips. I was looking into a combo hubs/1394a-b/USB 2.0 prior to my posting; since a mini only has a single Firewire port I thought that I would kill two birds with one credit card purchase. Would you have any recommendations in a Combo Hub?

Never used them. Though belkin does have a couple of firewire hub offerings.

Perhaps a miniStack would serve you well? I realize there's only one FW400 port, but more often than not, daisy chaining FW devices is a good alternative.

I have the IOGear GUH420 with four USB 2 and three Firewire 400 ports and it has been dead bang reliable and absolutely trouble free on my iMac Core 2 Duo.

I have the Dynex DX-h743p self powered,4 usb, 3firewire 400 and it works fine with IMac 17 inch, it will not work with my IPhone...Pete

hey Pete,

I tried to find it...amazon was out of them and Dynex says they're discontinued. here...

also you should consider what you're going to use it for, particularly for things that need high speed.

I did some speed testing awhile ago with USB and hard drives, and collected a frighteningly wide variety of readings. Low end was 6mb/sec. High end was 35.
Chaining hubs is all kinds of bad news. That, and PowerPCs for some reason are dog slow with USB hard drives. (yes, with 'high speed' usb, and installing a USB card did NOT help matters one bit) So if you need more ports and want to keep your speed, (and have an intel), then install a 4 port card.

I bought several of these - they're cheap, reliable, and fast.

Thanks for the info V1, the hub was for an Intel soon to be SLeopard and since this threads inception I've done some of my own tests. Borrowing hubs from others didn't make a difference if the Logitech Dongle was being used. So my hubs are working as others are, and the issue is with the Logitech USB RF dongle and power hubs from what I can observe.;)

I pulled an off-topic branch of posts out of here and it's now a separate thread: Can't access iogear.com pages

In an August 23 2009 9:11 AM EDT reply in that branch roger had made a comment which pertains to the USB hub issue so I'm copying it back here:

Hi, sandbox,

I apologize both for not recognizing that I should have started a new thread rather than continuing in your thread and for the Mods' failure to pick up on and right my wrong.

hey Artie, I didn't mind...when the train of thought leaves the station it often finds an uncharted course. I don't know the rules here so I may have made the same course change myself, but now that you've been busted I can go and pretend that I know what I'm doing. Thanks!