USB: it connects our things to other things and sometimes even to our computers. Apple was the first to implement this once next-generation technology, but unfortunately the company fell off the bandwagon when it came time to adopt USB 3.0. Of course, this is not entirely Apple's fault--NEC has not yet released any Mac OS X compatible drivers for the system, leaving Mac-o-philes lusting for that super speed upload rate.
To curb our disappointment, a few companies out there are developing ExpressCards for Mac users who want the adopt the technology for their own systems, like the LaCie USB 3.0 ExpressCard/34 ($59.99). It connects to your last-gen MacBook Pro, current generation 17-inch Core i5 MacBook Pro or a Mac Pro, and it tacks on two USB 3.0 ports for your 'puter. It advertises up to 5 Gb/s on a USB 3.0 connection or 480 MB/s on a USB 2.0 connection, and uses the same NEC component that our PC brethren have. It's also backwards compatible, though there's no real need for that unless you're desperately jonesin’ for those extra two USB slots.
Before getting to review the product, we realized that we needed to do some tests to see if this implementation of USB 3.0 is true to form. After all, if it's routing through the ExpressCard slot, we figured there might be some slow downs. We set out to do a few benchmarking tests, and even had some help from our sister magazine, Maximum PC. The results were interesting, to say the least, and proved that we've got a ways to go before we'll have true USB 3.0 power on our Macs. 
For starters, installation of the hardware was simple--the software drivers are available at LaCie's website and after you unload them, there's a nifty icon that shows up in the corner of your menu bar to let you know when the ExpressCard is engaged.
We used a circa 2007 15-inch MacBook Pro to test the ExpressCard, and an armada of portable hard drives of varying capacities and USB speeds. We tried two, bus-powered USB 2.0 drives--an older, 300GB from Buffalo, and a more recent, 1TB model from Toshiba--and neither had enough juice to sufficiently power on the hard drives. We also tried a USB 3.0 powered 500GB drive from Buffalo, and that didn't work either. Unfortunately, we couldn't test the speed of these hard drives through the Lacie USB 3.0 ExpressCard. We didn't exactly like the ticking noise the drives were making either.
When we contacted LaCie about this, they noted that currently all ExpressCards can not deliver enough power to feed a USB 3.0 peripheral--or, in this case, a USB 2.0 one either. The only hard drives currently compatible with this peripherals are ones that are externally powered.
Fortunately, the LaCie 2big 4TB USB 3.0 RAID fared better, since it is powered by a wall plug-in. When we benchmarked it using the adapter, the read and write speeds were 118MB/s and 79MB/s, respectively. Since we weren't entirely convinced that this was the full capacity of the RAID, we enlisted Senior Associate Editor at Maximum PC, Nathan Edwards, to benchmark the drive for us on an actual testbed using an on-board USB 3.0 port, operating at full bus speed.
The results were interesting: the read and write speeds were 182MB/s and 126MB/s, respectively. The read speed was only marginally faster than that of the ExpressCard, but the write speed was nearly double, which has something to do with the fact that the data has to route through the ExpressCard slot, which caps out at 480Mbits/s, anyway.
The read speeds of the Lacie 4TB RAID weren't too speed via the on-board USB 3.0.
The write speeds were fantastic. It's too bad this is not readily available on the Mac platform.
With that information in mind, we tested the RAID on the MacBook Pro's native USB 2.0 ports just to see the actual speed difference. Of course, the USB 3.0 ExpressCard tacks on about triple the power in write speeds, and double in reading data. In short, that means that the ExpressCard lets Mac users at least connect a USB 3.0 drive, but only one that is externally powered.
Currently, the only purpose of an external, USB 3.0 ExpressCard is to actually have access to these slightly faster hard drives. While the results aren't exactly twice the speed of USB's last-generation predecessors, it's still worth it to be able to tap into the next step in technology. USB 3.0 might take awhile to be adopted into the Apple sphere, but until then there's no reason you shouldn't tap into its magic with this affordable solution.
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