Raspberry Pi Forums

Thank you for reading this.

I bought an El Cheepo Chinese powered USB hub some time ago and while it works perfectly it feeds 5 volts back to the host device. I haven't it used it with my Raspberry Pi because the two 5 volt power supplies will be in parellel. I was going to perform some surgury on the cable (the case is sealed) and cut the 5 volt line to the host until I read something recently that indicated that this is how powered USB hubs are normally wired but Iḿ not so sure. What do you think about this?

USB hubs are not supposed to 'back feed' 5V per the specification however many do not follow the spec.

It used to be a big issue here but changes to the RPi B+ onward such as having 4 ports instead of 2, and improvements to the on board power circuits, have made the need for a HUB rare for most users.

I need to use a powered USB hub so that I can use my external HD drive and a USB optical drive. At this stage I cannot see an alternative.