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LaCie Brings USB 3.0 Hard Drive Support to Mac Pros and MacBook Pros

Thursday November 4, 2010 9:54 am PDT by Eric Slivka

Just as rumors of Intel pushing forward on its Light Peak connectivity standard surface, LaCie has announced support for USB 3.0 on Mac OS X with the release of a free driver to support the company's USB 3.0 hard drives.

LaCie announced today a major breakthrough, introducing industry-leading performance to Mac users with the availability of a USB 3.0 driver for Mac OS. The driver brings the fast speeds of LaCie's USB 3.0 hard drives to Mac computers and laptops - delivering transfer rates that are more than two times faster than FireWire 800!

With Apple yet to support USB 3.0 hardware and CEO Steve Jobs suggesting that such support is not likely to appear anytime soon, users will need to purchase either a PCI Express Card ($49.99) or ExpressCard/34 ($59.99) to add two USB 3.0 ports to their Mac. Consequently, LaCie's USB 3.0 solutions are only compatible with Mac Pros offering a PCI Express slot and MacBook Pros offering an ExpressCard/34 slot.


USB 3.0 offers a theoretical maximum of 5 Gb/s, topping the 3 Gb/s available through eSATA. Real world burst performance on LaCie USB 3.0 hard drives is on the order of 130 MB/s for single hard drives and 220 MB/s for dual hard drives.

Update: For clarification purposes, LaCie is not the first manufacturer to deliver USB 3.0 drivers to Mac, as CalDigit released a Mac-compatible SuperSpeed PCI Express Card and SuperSpeed ExpressCard, to support the company's line of AV Drive external hard drives, in early September.

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RT2020
110 months ago

Obviously Lacie didn't get the memo from Steve Jobs. If he doesn't see the potential, then there is none at all and nobody will ever need anything faster than USB 2 and FireWire 800.
:apple:


Steve Job thinks USB 3 is too complicated for your gradma. Obviously your grandma should be the benchmark for everyone else
Rating: 4 Votes
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bruinsrme
101 months ago

Who cares? Light Peak is around the corner. USB 3.0 will be dead like Blu Ray soon.


yep still waiting for that corner
Rating: 3 Votes
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Small White Car
110 months ago

Obviously Lacie didn't get the memo from Steve Jobs. If he doesn't see the potential, then there is none at all and nobody will ever need anything faster than USB 2 and FireWire 800.
:apple:


If you want to make a 'Steve Sucks' post it helps to not contridict the current front page of Macrumors (https://www.macrumors.com/2010/11/04/light-peak-coming-in-early-2011-with-apple-at-forefront/). That really hurts your argument right off the bat.
Rating: 1 Votes
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Small White Car
110 months ago
Anyone that needs speeds faster than Firewire 800 is currently using eSata, aren't they?

Can someone explain to me...is USB 3 all that different? Will eSata users rush out to upgrade? Yes...? No...?

If not, what's the point? Who will care? I strongly suspect eSata users will go right from that to LightPeak in a few years. Do they have ANY motivation to buy all new drives as a middle-step?
Rating: 1 Votes
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deviant
110 months ago

Who cares? Light Peak is around the corner. USB 3.0 will be dead like Blu Ray soon.


I hate making people sad. But i'll tell you this little secret. Blu ray isn't going anywhere soon. Like CDs have never really gone. You can open 100500 iTunes stores and **** like that, but there will always be a place for CDs, Blurays and whatever else.

acslater017
Internal hard drives have always been a lot faster then external ones. So, basically, they are trying to make all external drives as fast as the internal ones. (Considering all the external and internal drives are the same.[what changes is the way they connect to computer])
Rating: 1 Votes
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Cloudane
110 months ago
Sweet. With a bit of luck they use NEC chips and the drivers can be somehow adapted to work with 'custom' OS X platforms. Right now the USB 3 ports on my motherboard are good for er.... charging.

I like it when technology is pushed forward in spite of the Holy One. Hopefully it'll go some way towards convincing them that yes there IS demand for USB 3.

(In-joke: The company has now turned to crystal)
Rating: 1 Votes
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deviant
110 months ago

Hold on let me grab my Kleenex box. But in all seriousness, I have watched more movies on Amazon on Demand and Netflix streaming versus popping a BD in my PS3 or dedicated BD player.


That's ok for "just watching". But there are some odd and strange people around who like to "have" their favorite movies (and music). Yes , we are strange. But hey..
And, should we talk about QUALITY ? I hope not. I'm pretty sure you know the difference between blu ray and netflix streaming. But maybe you don't need all that quality. I can understand that.
Rating: 1 Votes
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Luis Ortega
101 months ago

Steve Job thinks USB 3 is too complicated for your gradma. Obviously your grandma should be the benchmark for everyone else


My little Asus netbook already comes with two USB3 ports, and the transfer rate is very noticeably faster when using my Lacie 7200rpm USB3 external drive than when using any of my USB2 external drives.
Rating: 1 Votes
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dukebound85
110 months ago

Nothing important; just another STILLBORN technology like Blu-Ray. Nice move by LaCie, but ineffective nevertheless.

Move along, citizens... :rolleyes:


I assume once apple adopts it, you will be praising the move. Until then, it is "stupid" tech right?
Rating: 1 Votes
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Goldfinger
110 months ago

I am not an expert in this field so can somebody enlighten me:

Will these super-fast USB interfaces improve real-world usage? Will hard drives, flash drives, video cameras, etc. be able to take advantage of these speeds if my computer's hard drive cannot keep up with it? Or will it simply buffer somehow?


USB2 maxes out at (theoretically) 480Mbps, or 60MB/sec. But it generally doesn't get there. Modern hard drives push out 110-130MB/sec. USB3 gets way more than that. So, yes external hard drive speeds will be 2x higher or more.
Rating: 1 Votes

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