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bfromme

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 15, 2010
3
0
NY,NY
This is the hub being referred to in this post:
http://www.amazon.com/HooToo-HT-UH0...953&creativeASIN=B00FR795WA&ascsubtag=WC33373

I recently upgraded my Macbook Pro 13" retina to 10.10.5. Soon after the upgrade time machine complained that it could no longer access the external disk I was using for backups. This disk (WD MyBook 1TB) was attached through the 7-port HooToo USB 3.0 hub. I tried to verify and repair the disk using disk utility and this failed. Worse, the disk could no longer be mounted. I bypassed the HooToo hub and plugged the disk directly into the Mac's USB port and the disk mounted and I was able to run disk utility to repair the disk. To make matters worse, my Macbook Pro would no longer boot with the hub plugged in. I had to unplug the hub, boot, and then plug the hub back in.

So I contacted HooToo support and they immediately offered to refund my purchase price for the hub. I found this strange, no troubleshooting, just an immediate refund offer! This leads me to believe that they have had many other problems with this hub on Macbook Pro 13" Retina's. When I asked what hub might work, the support person said something like "I don't know, you will have to ask other vendors if they have a compatible chip."

The reason I bought the HooToo was because it had the only power rating that would cover all of the 7 ports. Most other vendors have too little Volts/Amps to cover all the ports, thus guaranteeing you will have drop offs if you load up the hub with every port filled.

The strangest thing is that I have had this HooToo 7-port hub for about 10 months and it worked perfectly. It is only when I did the latest upgrade to OSX 10.10.5 that these problems started. Could Apple have tweaked the USB drivers for security reasons and screwed up USB 3.0 support? I will be calling AppleCare next.

So I am back to square one. I need to find a powered USB 3.0 hub that will work reliably on the Macbook Pro 13" Retina. Any suggestions?
 

DeltaMac

macrumors G5
Jul 30, 2003
13,473
4,410
Delaware
Hmm, the Amazon link that you posted shows this in the remarks under the Product Description!
"Does not support iMAC mini, Mac Mini and MacBook Pro with Retina Display and iMac with 27" Retina are currently not recommended for use with this product because the unstable performance"

I'm not quite sure what that means, other than it seems to be unstable (and known to be unstable) on most recent Macs.
And, when you had no trouble convincing the support tech, and they immediately offered you a refund - that's more interesting, I think.
 

bfromme

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 15, 2010
3
0
NY,NY
Hmm, the Amazon link that you posted shows this in the remarks under the Product Description!
"Does not support iMAC mini, Mac Mini and MacBook Pro with Retina Display and iMac with 27" Retina are currently not recommended for use with this product because the unstable performance"

I'm not quite sure what that means, other than it seems to be unstable (and known to be unstable) on most recent Macs.
And, when you had no trouble convincing the support tech, and they immediately offered you a refund - that's more interesting, I think.

Those comments must have been added after I purchased the product 10 months ago. If I had seen those warnings I definitely would not have purchased the product. So it appears that HooToo figured this out after selling a bunch of them.
 

jparker402

macrumors 6502a
Jun 7, 2016
556
54
Bellevue, NE
An awful lot late, but I am looking at this usb 3 hub now for my 2015 MacBook Air with Catalina. Anyone using this hub successfully now?
 
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