Slow wifi when I connect USB HDD

[Jeni393]

I have a the 900/110 fuill fibre connection, and a Smart Hub 2. I connected a 500gb HDD to the USB slot on the hub, and it affected the wifi connection speeds elsewhere in the house. My desktop is a wired connection, so when I was struggling with speeds on my iPhone, I ran a speed test and it was normal.  Others had a similar issue. I know devices can interfere with the wifi connection. Any suggestions on what I can do to solve this?

[Keith_Beddoe]

@Jeni393 

It will be the USB connection which is affecting the performance of the hub, as its not designed to process that type of high bandwidth connection, so the wireless processes are going to take a performance hit.

If you need shared storage, then use a proper NAS (Network Attached Storage) device.

[Jeni393]

Thanks. You just confirmed what I suspected. I don’t *need* the shared storage. It was a lazy way of sharing between my desktop and laptop, for when I’m working downstairs, or upstairs when one of my lads has stolen the desktop for gaming. I’ll just move the HDD between computers instead. 

Although thinking about it. Some, if not most of the slow Wi-Fi was when the drive wasn’t actually being accessed. 

[Keith_Beddoe]

There will nearly always be background activity on a HDD, also, unless its externally powered, it will be drawing power from the home hub internal supply.

The hub USB only supports SMB1 anyway, which is not very efficient, and required connected devices to support it. Windows 10 and 11 do not support it by default, it has to be enabled.

[Jeni393]

I did enable smb1. It was fine for the documents I was working on - just excel spreadsheets and some picture files I was uploading to my website. It’s not a powered drive, just one I’ve had in the cupboard for years that I had some random things I no longer needed stored on. I was just trying to find a way of not needing to move the external drive between rooms. 

[Keith_Beddoe]

I just use Microsoft Onedrive on all of my devices, it makes sharing stuff very easy, and you can access it anywhere, even when away from home.

USB drives are also useful, and more portable than a HDD.