USB hub

[Cream Soda]

Well I have a shitty targus 10 dollar hub from target, and it's obvious there's a huge lack of speed when plugging things into it rather than my laptop directly. It can't even run my usb hdd, have to plug directly into the laptop.

That being said, I was looking at this 7 port hub from belkin. It's powered by AC adapter instead of the computer itself. Would this work any better for me?

[sruon]

Hub splits speed of a single USB port among the different things plugged.

It's also possible the HUB (since it takes its power from the laptop, which is limited to 500 mA) does not allocate enough current to the HDD therefore making it not working.

Will an external AC HUB make HDD work? Yes.
Will it change speed? Probably not.

Hope I was clear enough!