Mac Mini and USB 2.0 hubs (hubs stop working within a month)

Question

I have an aluminum Mini running OSX 10.6.6 (Snow Leopard). With only 4 USB ports, I have need of a USB hub to accommodate my external drives and other peripherals: keyboard/mouse, camera and iPhone have to use the existing ports in the Mini (difficult access to ports due to space limitations), leaving one port for up to 4 external drives (older drives 40-60gb used for backup and extra storage).
I have problems using powered USB 2.0 hubs with this computer; I have 'burned out' 2 hubs since buying the Mini in February. They just flat out stop working, though they still show power (the power indicator light on the hubs); no peripheral is recognized when plugged into the hub (which worked fine for about a month). I can unplug the 'must use Mini ports' (camera, iPhone, charger, etc) and the peripheral drives are recognized and work normally when plugged directly into the Mini ports.
One hub was a Belkin 4-port hub (about 1 year old) and the other was a GE 3-port hub with several flash card readers (19-in-1 card reader), also about a year old. Is there any reasonable explanation why powered hubs would suddenly stop working, related to use with the Mac Mini 2010 aluminum version?
I had worse problems with the USB ports in an old (~2006) Mac Mini (out of warranty), where the USB ports in the Mini stopped working, which is partly why I bought the new mini. In light of this tidbit, (be honest, please) are there known issues with Mac Minis and USB?

Answer 1

Each of the external drives has its own power supply; I generally only use one drive at any one time, but on rare occasions I have powered up more than one to confirm or transfer files. I don't leave any of those drives on when not in use, and when everything is working I properly eject/unmount them before turning them off.
There have been times when I powered up a drive connected to a powered hub and both the hub and the drive indicated activity but the drive didn't mount. On those occasions the drives sometimes would not appear in Disk Utility, and other times would appear, but would not be "mountable". I didn't know what the best way to deal with that was, so I would just turn the drive off, hoping the lack of mounting on the desktop meant no real drive activity was occurring and I wouldn't risk data loss or drive damage. So far all the drives seem to work fine when plugged directly into the back of the mini.
The main external hard drive I was using when the Belkin hub failed (iomega 40g) is USB 2.0 only (no firewire). I have another drive that is only firewire (la cie 60g)... so it wasn't a factor. Two other external drives are ACOM, one 40g one 120g, and then there's my old iMac G5 disk (display fizzled and everything but the disk recycled through Apple's recycling program) which is mounted in an external enclosure and is part of the USB contingent, but is not being used for anything but backup (all three both USB 2 and FW400 capable). (I know, too many toys... but why throw them out?)
The USB hubs both had their own power supplies, too, and I never used them without power (though I tried it as part of troubleshooting, before reading the Apple article on USB and power requirements). Other USB devices that only work when plugged into the mac directly are my Epson Stylus CX4800 all-in-one, and my Radio Shark.
So, whaddya think? Should I risk buying another powered USB hub or just live with plugging in peripherals to one available USB port (through a short USB 2.0 extension) and only use one at a time? That would be a bit of a pain, but if there are no issues you've heard of with Mac USB ports (several unanswered questions in the Mini Support forums here involving USB and peripherals, I noticed), what else would explain the seemingly short lives of USB hubs?
Oh, here's something I just remembered: the last time the Belkin hub was working (last night), I had my Radtech BT mouse charger cable plugged in (not charging, mouse not attached) along with two of the external hard drives, and my Fuji camera USB cable. I got an error message onscreen (on the Mini) that a drive had been improperly ejected (or put away?), yet the hard drive in question was still mounted on the desktop. I looked at the hub, and the loose ends of the charger and the camera USB cable were touching. Could that have caused the error (and maybe the hub to fail)? (Edit: the camera cable I think was plugged into the mini's one available port; 3 external drives and the mouse charger were plugged into the hub, _but only one drive powered up and in use (3rd edit)_. The camera end of its USB cable contacted the mini-plug end of the mouse charger... could that have short-circuited the hub? +That wouldn't explain the failure of the GE hub a couple weeks before... but I don't know if any of this is connected, so to speak--2nd edit.+)
Message was edited by: blick
Message was edited by: blick
Message was edited by: blick