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How capable are USB hubs?

I have an AirPort Extreme router with a printer attached (it's not powered by USB). I want to extend this and add two hard drives (one for Time Machine and the other for EyeTV recordings).

Can a 4-port USB hub (I'm considering this one) achieve USB 2.0 speeds and power the hard drives? What difference would a self-powered vs externally-powered hub produce?

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As well as the hub do pay attention to the quality and suitability of connecting cables. – mas Jul 17 '09 at 15:33
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Ive run 3 external hds off a Belkin wall-powered hub and gotten the same speed as a direct connection, however my hard drives were all wall-powered as well. As a rule of thumb, it's definitely better to get powered USB hubs for any hard disk usage or heavy data access (bigger thumb drives, etc), while self/computer powered hubs are usually for mouse/keyboard and generally device inputs. There is no downside as far as I am aware of using a wall-powered hub, so if you have the extra cash, its always a good investment to go with external power. I personally use an old model of Belkin's hubs, and its served me well for almost 3 years now.

tl;dr: Drawing usb power is bad for lots of data transfer, grab an externally/wall powered hub and you should be fine. Try and get the hard drives themselves powered too -- the less stress on the hub, the better.

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Does this still make a difference if the HDs themselves are externally powered? I always assumed you could use an unpowered hub if all the devices you were using were self-powered. – stillinbeta Apr 23 '10 at 14:59
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A self-powered USB Hub typically reinforces and repeats the signal so that you may have longer cables. It's definitely to be prefered when running heavy USB appliances such as harddrives.

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USB cable length is limited by signal roundtrip time, not signal strength, so you can't get far beyond the 5m limit, no matter what cable/hub you use. Stability problems are likely caused by devices drawing power beyond specification. – Martin May 3 '11 at 17:46
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