Mac USB 3.0 Drivers For LaCie PCIe Card, ExpressCard and Drives
11/22/10 23:36 Filed in: Mac USB3 Support
LaCie is aggressively pursuing the Mac USB 3.0 market for owners of Macintosh Pro towers with it's PCI slots - and for recent MacBook Pro models with ExpressCard/34 slots built in. Here on its support page are optimized USB3 Drivers for Mac OSX Leopard 10.5 and up.
NOTE! These cards and its driver currently ONLY support LaCie brand USB 3.0 drives! So it is essential to pair these cards with LaCie SuperSpeed drives
from their current product line.For PCI-e Mac Pro Towers:
LaCie USB 3.0 PCI Express Card - Model 130977
For 15"-17" MacBook Pro ExpressCard Slots:
LaCie USB 3.0 ExpressCard/34 - Model 130998
Again - at this time - you MUST pair either of these cards with any number of LaCie's own USB3 external hard drive lineup.
Alternately: you can order a CalDigit USB3 PCI or ExpressCard directly from Caldigit.com - who's driver works explicitly paired with their AV DRIVE.
It should be noted, USB drivers are often - and can be explicitly written - to look for and detect very specific product and vendor ID codes when polling for the presence of a device on the USB bus. This double-edge sword has benefits for the manufacturer: Quality control for full compatibility and testing for the best consumer experience, but also can be used to leverage market-share. If you want a working Mac USB3 solution today - LaCie and CalDigit have the goods that other's don't.
It probably isn't far off when more adaptable and flexible USB 3.0 drivers for Mac OSX Leopard will become available that work with any number of 3rd-party USB 3.0 hard drives or USB 3.0 SSD Drives for the ultimate in SuperSpeed drive performance.
