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.

Related Roundup: Mac Pro

Buyer's Guide: Mac Pro (Neutral)

Top Rated Comments

RT2020

136 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

Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)

bruinsrme

127 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

Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Luis Ortega

127 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.

Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

dukebound85

136 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?

Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

deviant

136 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.

Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Goldfinger

136 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.

Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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