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Adding USB 3.0 to iMac?

Mark Morb

Mark Morb

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 19, 2007
186
0
Norfolk
Hi,

I need to add another external hard drive and it would be great if I could make use of USB 3.0

I have the following iMac:

27inch, Mid 2010
2.93 GHz i7
8GB Memory
ATI Radeon HD 5750 1024 MB

I'm unsure what ports this model has as I can't find a list anywhere. I know one is a LAN port and obviously there are the USB 2.0 ports.

Is there an adapter I can buy to use on any of the other ports that would enable me to use USB 3.0 at it's full speed with external drives?

Thanks a lot,
Mark Morb
 
You can find out quite easily.
Go to About this Mac/More Info/System Report/USB and it will tell you whether you have USB2 or USB3.
I'm pretty sure you would have USB2 as my iMac is 2011 and it's only USB2.
Good luck !
 
coolmacoz said:
You can find out quite easily.
Go to About this Mac/More Info/System Report/USB and it will tell you whether you have USB2 or USB3.
I'm pretty sure you would have USB2 as my iMac is 2011 and it's only USB2.
Good luck !
Click to expand...

Hi...I know that my iMac is USB 2.0 but I didn't know if I could use another port (Firewire?) with an adaptor to use a USB 3.0 external drive at full speed rather than using it with a USB 2.0 port at USB 2.0 speeds.
Thanks,
 
It's highly unlikely anyone will make a USB 3.0 to FW adapter that sends data at a high rate. You're better off using firewire.
 
Looks like Firewire it is...Shame Firewire external Drives are at a premium price above USB 3.0 Drives!
 
I have the same iMac as you (11,3) and would also consider a USB 3.0 upgrade.

Lacie has USB 3.0 PCI expresscards with OS X drivers, but no miniPCIe version which is the only port we could use (at least, when tossing out the airport card).
Theoretically however, using a miniPCIe USB 3.0 card from another manufacturer (e.g. this) but based on the same NEC 720200 USB 3.0 chipset as the Lacie expresscard should work using Lacie's drivers, but :
1/ I have not yet seen any reports from iMac folks going that route.
2/ the Lacie driver is probably locked to work only with Lacie USB 3.0 hard drives. I say probably, because contrary to the Snow Leopard driver, the new (sep 15th) Mountain Lion driver no longer mentions "is for LaCie storage devices only."... a glimpse of hope or just forgotten on the part of Lacie?

For now though, it seems adding eSATA to the 2010 iMac and using eSATA external drives is the most we can do.
 
Last edited:
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