Hi. Could connecting an external hard drive (Maxtor 4tb) to a vero 4K+ without a powered usb hub potentially cause voltage to drop to a point where the ethernet connection is affected every so often? I think this may be happening on a family member’s vero and just wanted to check this is a possibility before purchasing a powered hub from the osmc store. Thanks.
Hi
Yep - the PHY uses a fair bit of power at Gigabit speeds.
I’d recommend always powering external drives because if the Vero is underpowered you won’t damage it but if your HDD is underpowered you could lose data. Keep in mind that over time, power supplies degrade and will only provide less power output in the future.
I am actually surprised the drive is working. I have another customer who is struggling with a Maxtor 4TB as it keeps spinning up and down and showing multiple resets in logs. If he’s replied to the ticket (have not checked yet), I’ll point him to this thread to hopefully encourage him to externally power his drive.
Cheers
Sam
I suspect people’s reluctance isn’t the £15 or so for a good hub but rather the fact they’re bulking things out by having this all sitting by the TV. Not a pretty sight.
This is something we are taking in to consideration for new models (USB3 will mandate 1.5A of downstream power per port), but obviously newer models are a while off yet.
Thanks Sam, really helpful. FYI, the vero hasn’t had any issues playing uncompressed uhd mkvs from the Maxtor since connecting it months ago, but the ethernet issue has had me stumped for a while. I’ll purchase the osmc hub now. Thanks 
Great to hear!
From the sounds of it, your drive doesn’t contain content you can’t replace, so I can appreciate the fact that data integrity isn’t too important.
If you’ve access to the family device, try removing the drive and running an iperf test (we can advise).
I’ll chuck some stickers in with your hub if you do order.
Sam
Will do when I next get a chance. Thank you!