My PC has 3 USB ports. On two of them I have a USB hub providing 4 more USB connections. On these 2 USB ports I can’t connect either an external DVD drive or an external HDD. The drive shows up in Windows but disappears right away, and the HDD doesn’t even get detected, its light just stays on.
On the other hand, I can’t plug a USB hub into that 1 remaining USB port, because even when the HDD or the drive is the only thing on it, it still doesn’t work… So whenever I want something from a CD, I have to disconnect the HDD.
If I want to copy from the DVD to this HDD, I’ll have to copy to the 35GB disk inside my PC first (which holds W7 and all my programs, settings and so on), so there’s really very little space. I’m thinking of buying an energy-efficient USB HUB for just 2 devices, to see if that helps…
That would give me 1 extra USB port, and if I powered 4 devices from just one port instead of two, I could have 7 devices connected at once – all the ones I own.