This should be an easy one for tech dopers. One of my customers asked me if they can use a USB hub to allow two or more computers access to a single USB device (printer, extrenal hard drive/DvD player, etc). Normally you would use a USB hub to allow a single computer access to multiple USB devices (in the event you run out of USB ports).
I’m not a systems guy but my first inclination is to say ‘yes’…it seems it SHOULD work that way from what little I know of these devices…sort of like the old serial device splitters and/or switch boxes.
A USB hub will not allow two computers to share access to devices. There is only one master for a USB setup. You can buy switches that will let you attach more than one computer to something like a printer. These are not USB hubs.
The way to do is to connect the printer to one of the computers and share the printer , connect the two computers with a USB Network cable. A better way is to use ethernet and a router in place of the USB transfer cable.
Thanks for the answers! I’ve never used a USB hub before so I wasn’t sure…and looks like the answer I figured off the top of my head was wrong! Saved me some embarrassment.
Actually its not a printer the customer was refering too. Were it so I would have simply suggested they share the printer (indeed they have an ethernet network). What they wanted to share between two computers is a USB tape drive…but they don’t want to set up a network share for it, instead they want to allow both computers to access it at essentially the same time (they don’t want to swap USB cables back and forth either). I’ve been trying to recommend a network backup solution, but they asked me if their idea was feasible so I figured I’d ask here to see (I knew someone would have played with USB hubs around here).
I’ve had occasion to use some USB peripheral switches here and while they do work, they don’t work as well as you’d like. Not exactly seamless. It’s a $20 solution and that’s about how well it functions.
You can install one for your clients but I’d suggest doing a little prework so that if they get sick of the thing you’ll be ready to set it up in a better fashion (i.e. over their LAN).
Kill multiple birds with one stone department… Set them up with a NAS (Network Attached Storage) box.
The basic features of these little boxes is that they plug into the Ethernet network, and in the box, there’s a hard drive and a couple USB ports so the thing acts as a network share drive and print server. You can also add extra USB drives to the thing, so it should be readily possible to plug in a USB tape drive. Before buying, check with the makers of the NAS and the tape drive to see if there are any known issues or conflicts - working through a network makes these things not entirely plug-and-play, and you’ll run into various subsets of known problems.
I don’t think they’d be able to have multiple PCs accessing the tape at the same time - tape takes a while to access and read/write and rewind, and can only be accessed by one PC at a time.
If they don’t need more storage, there are also “USB servers” that will allow multiple users on a network to access a USB device, but again, it’s one at a time, and their implementation is a bit buggy and slow.
