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USB 3.0 and 2.0

onthecouchagain

onthecouchagain

macrumors 604
Original poster
Mar 29, 2011
7,382
2
Question: I have an old MacBook Air that has USB 2.0's... can I still buy an external hard drive that uses USB 3.0? The wires that come with the ext HD will still fit and work with my Mac?

Yes? I'm a little confused by the "direction" of the backwards compatibility.

Thanks in advance.
 
M

MacPat333

macrumors regular
Sep 16, 2012
140
0
Dubai
You can do so only if the external harddrive is compatible with USB 2.0 as well as 3.0.

If it only runs USB 3.0 it won't work with your MBA!
 
KylePowers

KylePowers

macrumors 68000
Mar 5, 2011
1,688
197
MacPat333 said:
You can do so only if the external harddrive is compatible with USB 2.0 as well as 3.0.

If it only runs USB 3.0 it won't work with your MBA!
Click to expand...
Architecture and features
In USB 3.0 dual-bus architecture is used to allow both USB 2.0 (HIGH Speed/LOW Speed/FULL Speed) and USB 3.0 (Super Speed) operations to take place simultaneously, thus providing backward compatibility. Connections are such that they also permit forward compatibility, that is, running USB 3 devices on USB 2.0 ports. The structural topology is the same, consisting of a tiered star topology with a root hub at level 0 and hubs at lower levels to provide bus connectivity to devices.
Click to expand...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_3.0
 
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