I have a quick question about using a USB Switcher with the Framework.
Essentially I’d like to be able to use the one keyboard to type on my Framework, or on another laptop, without needing to swap a cable around. As I understand, a USB Switcher would be perfect for this.
However, in my research I’ve read that if you have external USB hard drives connected to a computer, a Switcher can cause data issues or corruption when you toggle the switch, even if it’s just the keyboard being switched.
I was hoping someone could confirm or deny that? I’m not exactly sure if the USB modules (250 gigabytes) counts as a external hard drive, but I’m 90% sure it does. So it would be in danger if I were using a switcher, wouldn’t it?
That doesn’t make any sense. If you switch both the storage drive and the keyboard then yeah you’ll definitely cause issue but just switching the keyboard won’t hurt the drive (as long as the drive is not accidentally also connected to the switcher).
The issue is not if it counts as a hard-drive but with unexpected disconnection.
From what I was reading the trouble is if the USB controller for the switcher is on the same USB controller (?) as the hard drive, pushing the button to switch and disconnect the keyboard could cause the hard drive itself to also temporarily be disconnected, or something along those lines
I started looking it up after seeing this disclaimer on a switcher i was going to buy
I looked it up and initially google was telling me it was still a problem, but as I look now it sounds like if they’re connected to two different USB ports it should be fine.. maybe the search engine somehow thought I meant having the hard drive connected to the switcher even though I said “plugged into the laptop”
Only if the switcher somehow takes the usb controller down in which case don’t use it in the first place.
IF you connect them to the switcher
That is a somewhat common use case even if it isn’t a particularly good idea. If you need to share data between the systems there is usually a better option.
yeah, I’ve got a dedicated data swapper USB cable to hand backing files up between PC and laptop. All I wanted from this was to be able to use the same keyboard to type on my framework laptop and a second laptop without shuffling physical components around whenever I want to change which system I’m typing on
