You are apparently trying to use LaCie software with no LaCie hardware in sight, which does seem a bit unreasonable. On what basis do you make such a presumption? It may well be the case - I don’t know this, I’m just saying it’s a possibility at least as likely as the doomsday scenario you depict - it might be that if you install the LaCie driver and use it with one of their computer-end devices (e.g., their ExpressCard or PCIe USB 3.0 hardware) that it will recognise ‘remote’ equipment from a different manufacturer. And these controllers will presumably only work with LaCie USB 3.0 storage as well! See, LaCie sells USB 3.0 controller cards, too. Then we’ll all be able to enjoy “super speed” on our Macs!ĭisclosure: Seagate provided the GoFlex drive and USB 3.0 interface for testing at no charge. I imagine other companies (Belkin? Iomega?) will soon introduce Mac OS X drivers of their own and someone, sometime will leave them unlocked. CalDigit and LaCie didn’t write these drivers, they’re just repackaging them. No matter what Steve Jobs thinks of USB 3.0, it is coming to the Mac and soon. Sooner or later they’ll have to open the driver up for other devices.ĭespite this setback, I consider it a good sign that there are now two USB 3.0 driver sets available for Mac OS X. And these controllers will presumably only work with LaCie USB 3.0 storage as well! They’re likely to have some seriously angry customers on their hands once the promise of device interoperability is broken. They have every right to lock it down, but the way they did it is foolish. They built this driver for their own products, not so folks (like me) with other companies’ hardware can use it. But this works fine without the driver installed, too! Stephen’s Stance Note: The LaCie driver doesn’t interfere with the ability of Mac OS X to access USB 2.0 devices through the NEC chip’s backwards-compatibility. So I’ll uninstall it and wait for someone else to release a real open driver. I looked through the driver and plist files and couldn’t see any obvious way to change the driver to work with non-LaCie storage. Almost like they knew we wouldn't want to keep it installed. LaCie includes an uninstaller and instructions on how completely to remove their driver. Although it supports any USB 3.0 adapter card, it will only allow LaCie storage devices to be connected. This is Seagate’s USB Vendor ID, so the driver is presumably locked to LaCie’s ID (which I believe is “59f” for whatever that’s worth). That’s right: This free driver wouldn’t allow me to connect a device from Vendor “bc2”. Then I spotted the error message: “Super Speed device other than LaCie is not supported – Vendor ID” Dmesg tells the tale: LaCie's driver won't work with a Seagate drive The drive spun up, the lights came on, but nothing else happened.Īfter refreshing System Profiler and Disk Utility a few times, I jumped over to the Terminal to see if there were any error messages. Although the ExpressCard slot lacks full USB 3.0 power, and I was using a 7200 rpm “GoFlex Pro” drive, mine had plenty of juice. My next step was plugging in the Seagate GoFlex drive with its USB 3.0 cable. I popped in my cheapie Keydex USB 3.0 ExpressCard adapter and sure enough, an entry for “USB Super-Speed Bus” appeared in System Profiler. I noted that the installer specifically claims that “this driver may work on USB 3.0 Host controllers base (sic) on the NEC 720200 chipset.” This is great news, since every current USB 3.0 host controller is based on this chipset! There it is! USB 3.0 on Mac OS X! I downloaded the tiny driver package and installed the “MacOS106” package it included. Pleased that LaCie released their driver to the world, I was anxious to try it out for myself. But I could only work with the combo in Windows, since Mac OS X lacked a driver for it. I’ve been testing USB 3.0 for the past week using a Seagate GoFlex drive and Keydex USB 3.0 ExpressCard adapter. They claim on their USB 3.0 page that their 2big USB 3.0 drive could hit 220 MB/s in “burst transfer” using their cards and driver. LaCie seems awfully proud to be bringing USB 3.0 to the Mac, and they expound about the virtues of this new bus. Let’s hope we get an unlocked driver soon! Now You LaCie It Now LaCie is out with a free driver for just about any USB 3.0 card, but it’s locked to LaCie’s storage products. CalDigit was first with a USB 3.o driver, but it was tied to the pricey PCI Express and ExpressCards they sell. Steve Jobs isn’t too keen on USB 3.0, apparently, but other vendors are stepping in to fill the void. LaCie has released a free driver that supports every current USB 3.0 host controller but will only talk to LaCie USB devices
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