USB Hard Drive Connected to Bell GigaHUB Causes Wi-Fi Slow and Disconnect

[cheeses]

I’m experiencing a recurring issue with my bell gigahub. Recently, whenever I plug in my external usb hard drive to the gigahub, the wifi becomes extremely slow or even disconnects, after I plug it out everything back to nomal. This issue camp up about a week ago. At first, I thought the issue was from the gigahub, but after I replaced a new one nothing changed. And I tried restarting it and restoring it to factory settings, but neither worked. The firmware version is 2.14.1, I think this is the latest one. Please help me out, VERY VERY THX!

[WelshTerrier]

Good Day & Welcome.

Thank you for posting your question. Your firmware 2.14.1, is the most recent.

We would like to help you. Can you please tell us more?

What is the make and model of your USB hard drive? Does it have a separate power supply or is it dependant on the power provided by the modem? Are you transferring files from your computer over a wired or wireless connection? Have you tried using an ethernet cable?

Extremely slow speeds can be as a direct result of the power limitations provided by the modem and or the draw on power needed to complete network file transfers. If your hard drive does not have its own power source, it may be struggling with the power provided by the Giga Hub. The USB ports on the Giga Hub are intended for light file sharing or printer connections. Large file transfers can result in very slow real-world transfer rates.

1. You can try using a USB hub that connects to a power source and connect this to your modem & USB drive.
2.  Have you looked into plugging the external hard drive directly into your computer instead of the Giga Hub? This will give you your best speed for file transfers.
3. Wireless speed is affected by distance, physical obstructions & interference from other electronics. Have you looked in moving your computer closer to your modem?
4. Bandwidth is another factor that you may need to consider. Are you trying to download files directly to your USB drive or are you simply moving files back & forth from your computer to your USB drive.
5. Have you tried to restart your modem with the USB unplugged? Once your modem has fully power up, try plugging you USB drive back into the modem to see if this makes a difference.

Let us know.

Take care.

[cheeses]

Hello, Thank you for your reply. My hard drive is WD 20TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive, and it has its own power supply and also uses it, this hard drive just can use USB to connect, so it is directly connected to the gigahub's USB-A port. Because I have a lot of data, I connected it to the gigahub so I could use it across different devices. I've been using it like this for about a year without any problems, but the problem I mentioned in this post appeared just before I posted this. Furthermore, I noticed that when I connected the hard drive, the gigahub's CPU and physical memory usage were extremely high, almost at full capacity, even though I wasn't transferring anything and the hard drive was in standby mode. Uploading and retrieving data was simply impossiblem, at the same time, Wi-Fi also cannot work. So, I strongly suspect that the new firmware caused this problem. I've tried everything, but nothing works. The problem occurs whenever the hard drive is plugged in. Please help more very thanks!

[WelshTerrier]

Good Day.

Thank you for your reply. Without being there, I can only speculate on your problem. I believe your issue is being caused by a lack of power & the size of method you are using to move files to your USB hard drive. 

As a starting point, there has not been any recent update or release in firmware for the Giga Hub. Firmware 2.14.1 .

It was released in the fall of 2025.

If you unplug your hard drive, does your Giga Hub return to normal operation after a reboot? Have you tried plugging your hard drive in to your computer to see if you are experiencing the same type of response issues?

Have you looked in to changing your USB Hard disk power source and replacing it with USB hub that connects to a power source?

Are you experiencing issues with large file transfers or all file transfers? Wired vs wireless?

Let us know.

Take care.

[cheeses]

Hello, Thank you for your reply. As I said before, The problem always occurs when the hard drive is plugged in the gigahub, and a restart is required for gigahub to work properly. I'm absolutely certain the hard drive and power supply of the hard drive are working correctly, because lately I've only been able to use it on my computer. when I connected the hard drive, the gigahub had extremely high CPU and physical memory usage, to the point that WiFi couldn't work; it required unplugging the hard drive and restarting to restore normal operation. I also saw this others on raddit had the same problem. Very thanks.

[BellPatricia]

Hey there @cheeses 

Thank you for reaching out to the Bell community, and for all of the troubleshooting you have done!

Do you see any error messages on your modem when the connection drops? Can you test with a different hard drive to see if the same thing happens?

We also invite you to share screen shots of your speed test results both with and without the hard drive plugged in. 

@BellPatricia 

[Mectech]

I have exactly the same problem with my Bell 4000 giga hub. Unstable internet connection once I plug an HDD. And my HDD has its own power adapter. I hope I could use my own router instead of this crap.

[cheeses]

Hello, Patricia, I followed your instructions and tested the Gigahub both before and after connecting an external HDD, and I took screenshots. 

The first screenshot was taken before plugging in the HDD, Everything looks normal and all stats are within a normal range.

The second screenshot was taken after the hard drive was connected. As you can see, CPU and memory usage jump to extremely high levels and stay there continuously.

After about one hour, all devices disconnect and the network becomes completely unusable. It feels exactly like a computer freezing or crashing. I can’t access the admin page anymore, and all the LEDs on the router stay solid blue with no warning or error indication. The only way to recover is to unplug the HDD and reboot the gigahub, after which it works normally again.

During this test, there was no upload or download activity at all, I just plugged in the HDD.

I’ve also tried all the troubleshooting steps you previously suggested, and none of them made any difference.

The HDD itself is working perfectly fine, and the power supply is normal as well, since it works without any issues when connected to a computer. Unfortunately, I don’t have a second HDD to compare with.

The key point here is that this issue started suddenly about four weeks ago. I didn’t change any settings or perform any operations on the gigahub. Before that about one year, the HDD had been connected all the time and everything worked fine. I even requested a gigahub replacement, but the problem still persists on the new one.

Based on the consistently high CPU and memory usage, I strongly suspect a firmware issue. The sustained high load likely causes overheating and eventually freezes the gigahub. This is just my personal speculation, but I would really appreciate it if you could investigate whether a recent firmware update might be the root cause. Very Thanks!

[dks]

Thank you for your report. Can you say which device you are using and what the firmware version is? And how many devices in total you have connected? 

[BellPatricia]

Good morning, and thanks for the additional information @cheeses 

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@BellPatricia 

[cheeses]

Hi, the device is Giga Hub which is white and big. The firmware version is 2.14.1. I connected about ten devices on the Giga Hub.

[Wumpus]

I have the identical issue (using AData 7200 rpm 2.5” low-power USB3 HDD). It is now 7 days of this, and I just got dropped from a meeting with my manager, and it has also happened with customers. WiFi authentication seems to be the symptom. Immediately after resetting the GigaHub back to factory config, I can connect 1 or two devices via WiFi, and within a few minutes, even those may be logged out, and also no others can log in (or back in). The most I have achieved is 23 minutes of ability to connect.

I have had to install multiple Powerline devices (the Bell GigaHub modem internet mostly works - it is the WiFi which is essentially unusable). I have also run a CAT7 cable to an old Huawei router on the other side of the house in the basement, and am using that as the home's primary WiFi access point, which just passably works. The only way I can get any work done for the last week (let alone accessing the internet in the evenings or watching TVs, or for any use of smart speakers or HVAC controls, security cameras, etc) is through these workarounds, and most of those devices are not made to support any wired connectivity. So most of them have been down all week.

I cannot even login to the Bell WiFi app (it asks if I am in 'Airplane mode' because it cannot connect to the modem) to check to see if I am also experiencing straining memory and CPU usage. Instead, for 7 times I have had to go through Bell Tech Support, 1 to 1.5 hours each time, and I even had a very knowledgeable technician come by twice, replacing the modem one of the times, as he observed the same problem. Another time the phone technician wrote in our ticket that there is definitely a hardware problem. We still have the same problem.

A big part of the problem is that the support technicians have stated that it is Bell company policy that one technician cannot 'trust' what another has concluded and written down in the customer’s support ticket. If one finds that the internet is working, but not WiFi, the next tech support technician cannot continue from the prior techncian’s findings: they must start again from scratch, costing the customer so many hours of time and frustration, redoing the same things, again and again. Perhaps collectively we can figure this out. I am at my wit's end.

Thanks Cheeses for your reporting contribution on this. It makes sense that if the GigaHub is overloaded, then it isn't able to process WiFi authentication. That's why it works only immediately after a reboot (when Bell Tech Support says everything is successfully resolved each time). I don’t know how many times this support forum has rejected this saying “Authentication Ticket Mismatched, failed authentication” because the connection keeps breaking.

[DONALDT]

The only solution to this issue is to not use a USB hard drive.  If you have one plugged into the Giga hub, remove it and reboot your Giga hub.  This started for me in August 2025 immediately after an automatic firmware update to 2.14.  This issue has been discussed on this forum numerous times since that update with Bell asking the same questions as noted above. Bell has not acknowledged or resolved the issue.  I have tried all the other suggestions noted above without success.

[Wumpus]

You are correct, @DONALDT!  Thank you!

When I checked again, I noticed I also had a WD Cloud mini NAS drive connected to the GigaHub (in addition to the AData low-power USB HDD), so both the USB-A and USB-C ports were being used.

The WD mini NAS had been plugged in for about a year, and was never accessible through the GigaHub (it had worked with older modem/routers). Also, the WD mini NAS was FULLY powered using its matching adapter, and worked fine if I switched to using its own (slow) Ethernet, or plugged its USB into another networked hosting device (such as a Panasonic Plasma TV, Yamaha amp, Formuler IPTV or old NetGear WiFi extender). The AData did not have additional power supplied (beyond that from the USB-A connector), however, the AData has been previously powered by the above devices, plus an old tablet, and once, by an old cellphone several years back (I think a Huawei P20), so it should not be drawing a lot of power.

Anyway, I removed both the AData and the WD USB connectors, as they never worked, did another factory reset, and all is working again, as far as WiFi uptime and faster client WEP authentication (much less than 2 minutes now).

The GigaHub still doesn't work for any kind of file sharing, which would have been great for speed and connectivity, but since it never worked, I'll need to use older, more broadly compatible devices, like one of the old Powerlines, or an old 2.4GHz Access Point. It doesn't function like in the manual.

But at least I'm able to work again, and access the other WiFi devices. That was definitely the issue.