New forum member, first post.

Last week I bought a Simpletech 250GB external hard drive (as I did not want a mains powered unit) and did not discover until I opened the box that it had a twin USB connection to power it.

I tried it with only one of the USB's but it could not be detected by Windows Explorer.

My problem is that the supplied cable is only 1ft long and so I have to move the HD onto my chair arm everytime I move the laptop onto my lap. It's a pain and I just know I'll forget to pick it up sometime and it'll fall.

I don't suppose you can get an extension for a twin USB cable and my idea was to buy a USB hub. My question is - will that work ? With the hub connecting to the laptop with only one USB, can I then connect both hard drive USBs into the hub and have enough power for it to be picked up by the laptop systems ? If so, will any old (cheap) hub do ?

Thanks for any help and advice.

Ian

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With regards to your problem, i expect using a hub will work as i expect it's using 2 usb ports for the extra power and i think the hub tells windows that it's basically got an extra 2, 4 etc ports so that it can have several devices running at a time. I have a hub on eBay at the moment but it's only usb 1.1

You could also just get two $1 USB cables.. Male USB A - Female USB A type. Tape them together if you like

true, that will probably work out cheaper too unless you want really long ones