USB 3.0 on 2011 17" MBP

[rev.b]

I finally got the GMYLE card (BC628) to work with 10.8.3!! I can only recommend this 10$ card if you're ready for some hacking Here's what I did (This will probably not work with every GMYLE card as the chipset may vary):
1. Remove the card from the slot
2. Download a patched PXHCD.kext (Link for the one which worked for me, else see below)
3. copy the downloaded kext to /System/Library/Extensions/
4. Open Terminal and type the following commands:
a) sudo chmod -R 755 /System/Library/Extensions/PXHCD.kext
b) sudo chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions/PXHCD.kext
c) sudo rm -R /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache
d) sudo rm -R /System/Library/Extensions.mkext
NOTE: if step c) or d) returns any error don't worry just proceed
e) sudo reboot
5. After reboot open diskutilty and repair permissions
6. Now shutdown your computer
7. Connect your USB 3.0 card
8. Turn on your computer
9. You're already done if it works, else proceed to 10.

10. Open System Profiler and check Extensions (whether the PXHCD.kext is loaded successfully or not..)
11. If it is not listed open terminal and type:
sudo kextload -v /System/Library/Extensions/PXHCD.kext
12. Now check your System Profiler whether the USB Super-Speed Bus is present or not.

13. If the kext did not load automatically but did after 11. you would have to do this after every reboot.
The best workaround I could imagine is:
14. download this shell file: Link
15. Put the load_kext.sh into /Users/Shared
16. Tell OS X to load this on every boot by running:
sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook /Users/Shared/load_kext.sh
And accepting with your password. The card should work now after the next reboot; it's also hot-pluggable.

I downloaded the kext from this forum: Link and re-uploaded the 1.0.10 so that you won't have to register for InsanelyMac...
The instructions are partly copied from here: Link
And last but not least Thanks to Apple for explaining Login hooks here: Link

Hope this helps,
Luk

You, sir, just made my day and my '11 MBP now has 2 USB 3.0 ports. Worked just fine after step 9.

Thank you!

 

[vpro]

Congrats !!!

 

[rev.b]

Not perfect, though.

Just had a kernel panic with PXHCD.kext involved.

 

[nxtlukas]

unfortunately there may be happening some very unexpected things with this kind of unsupported drivers. Fortunately it's been working perfectly for me since discovering this solution. You might also note that there is afaik no EC to USB3 solution for Mac which supports hubs. So good luck to all of you still trying!

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

You, sir, just made my day and my '11 MBP now has 2 USB 3.0 ports. Worked just fine after step 9.

Thank you!

What kind of compatibility are we talking about at this point with the hacked driver? I have a 2008 Macbook Pro I wouldn't mind be able to plug in USB 3.0 support for more storage while recording music.

It seems like with Apple supporting USB 3.0 natively now that 3rd party companies SHOULD be able to offer a full range USB 3.0 add-on card that does more than just hard drives, etc., but that doesn't seem to be the case thus far (e.g. Sonnet says only certain brand card readers and hard drives work with their USB 3.0 Express Card). Admittedly, hard drives are probably the only thing I'd "need" USB 3.0 for on the Macbook Pro (since it obviously has 2.0 ports on it already), but it's kind of the principle of the thing.

What about Hackintosh drivers? I assume they are making use of Apple's own USB 3.0 driver support now? Could that be adopted somehow or that what we're dealing with here and the hack listed?

In any case, for $10, heck, I'm ordering one regardless....

 

[rev.b]

What kind of compatibility are we talking about at this point with the hacked driver? I have a 2008 Macbook Pro I wouldn't mind be able to plug in USB 3.0 support for more storage while recording music.

It seems like with Apple supporting USB 3.0 natively now that 3rd party companies SHOULD be able to offer a full range USB 3.0 add-on card that does more than just hard drives, etc., but that doesn't seem to be the case thus far (e.g. Sonnet says only certain brand card readers and hard drives work with their USB 3.0 Express Card). Admittedly, hard drives are probably the only thing I'd "need" USB 3.0 for on the Macbook Pro (since it obviously has 2.0 ports on it already), but it's kind of the principle of the thing.

What about Hackintosh drivers? I assume they are making use of Apple's own USB 3.0 driver support now? Could that be adopted somehow or that what we're dealing with here and the hack listed?

In any case, for $10, heck, I'm ordering one regardless....

Poor, as I found out. Not reliable because of the eventual kernel panics.

 

[Semiopaque]

What kind of compatibility are we talking about at this point with the hacked driver? I have a 2008 Macbook Pro I wouldn't mind be able to plug in USB 3.0 support for more storage while recording music.

It seems like with Apple supporting USB 3.0 natively now that 3rd party companies SHOULD be able to offer a full range USB 3.0 add-on card that does more than just hard drives, etc., but that doesn't seem to be the case thus far (e.g. Sonnet says only certain brand card readers and hard drives work with their USB 3.0 Express Card). Admittedly, hard drives are probably the only thing I'd "need" USB 3.0 for on the Macbook Pro (since it obviously has 2.0 ports on it already), but it's kind of the principle of the thing.

What about Hackintosh drivers? I assume they are making use of Apple's own USB 3.0 driver support now? Could that be adopted somehow or that what we're dealing with here and the hack listed?

In any case, for $10, heck, I'm ordering one regardless....

Got the cheapo GMYLE card yesterday. The Oyen drivers did not work so I tried I tried the Mountain Lion driver from tonymacx86. Instantly worked.

This guy

:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0045BLP1S/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

In the express card slot of an early 2008 Macbook Pro running 10.8.2.

I get read and write speeds in the 60ish MB/s range on my WD My Passport 2TB. I could not get a USB 3.0 hub to work with the card yet and have not tried anything else on it.

 

[rcappo]

Got the cheapo GMYLE card yesterday. The Oyen drivers did not work so I tried I tried the Mountain Lion driver from tonymacx86. Instantly worked.

This guy

:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0045BLP1S/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

In the express card slot of an early 2008 Macbook Pro running 10.8.2.

I get read and write speeds in the 60ish MB/s range on my WD My Passport 2TB. I could not get a USB 3.0 hub to work with the card yet and have not tried anything else on it.

What driver would that be? Do you have a link to it?

http://www.tonymacx86.com/236-os-x-...-adds-support-some-3rd-party-controllers.html

I'm trying to get that card to work in my mid-2010 MacBook Pro. It worked fine in 10.6.8...

 

[Semiopaque]

I downloaded the MultiBeast Mountain Lion 5.2.1 pkg, ran it and only installed the USB 3.0 drivers.

 

[rcappo]

http://www.tonymacx86.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=155
You do have to register to d/l the file I guess.


I just installed the CalDigit option under Drivers&Bootloaders -> Drivers -> Miscellaneous ->USB3 - Third Party from the MultiBeast installer and it works.

Now to get NTFS write support...

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Got the cheapo GMYLE card yesterday. The Oyen drivers did not work so I tried I tried the Mountain Lion driver from tonymacx86. Instantly worked.

This guy

:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0045BLP1S/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

In the express card slot of an early 2008 Macbook Pro running 10.8.2.

I get read and write speeds in the 60ish MB/s range on my WD My Passport 2TB. I could not get a USB 3.0 hub to work with the card yet and have not tried anything else on it.

I ordered that one yesterday for my 2008 Macbook Pro. Let me know how the reliability goes for you with that driver. I don't want really want a bunch of kernel panics. I installed a 7200 RPM Hitachi 500GB drive for recording music, etc. before I started on my album project. I'm down to around 250GB space right now, but I can always move the old project onto another drive so it's not like paramount that I have a USB 3.0 drive connected, but it would be nice for transferring files rather than having to buy another FW800 drive.

 

[rcappo]

I installed OS X Fuse, then the NTFS-3G package...but my external NTFS drive would only work in the built-in USB ports, not the GMYLE USB 3 card anymore.

So, I had to redo the MultiBeast install, picking the CalDigit usb3 driver like I stated above.

Now, everything works and I can write to the NTFS drive using the 2 new USB3 ports.

 

[rcappo]

https://github.com/bfleischer/fuse_wait/downloads

I also had to install the v 1.1 of this Fuse_wait file in order to remove the false error message when the drive was mounted. But, that is more of an NTFS issue.

 

[rev.b]

I installed usb 3.0 drivers with multibeast and I'll see how it works.
It seems to support a lot more devices (USB 2.0) than before. My external HDD worked, but not some USB flash drives, and until now, it recognised every USB device I plugged in.

If it doesn't crash, it would be awesome.

Some annoyances: the card itself is too easy to remove. You have to hold it in with one finger, or it will come out every time you remove a USB device. After being disconnected, the only way for it to work again is a system reboot. Not very practical.

But as long as it works, it is very nice to have two extra USB ports on my 17" MBP for just a few €/$...

 

[rev.b]

No, it's not usable. It stops working after sleep, and it's only detected again after a reboot. Oh, well...

 

[yusukeaoki]

No, it's not usable. It stops working after sleep, and it's only detected again after a reboot. Oh, well...

Do you find any other problems other than KP and not working after sleep?
I too am interested in this but dont want to go through time and money for something unusable.

 

[Semiopaque]

No, it's not usable. It stops working after sleep, and it's only detected again after a reboot. Oh, well...

Mine disconnects on sleep (like it was unplugged) as well, but it does reconnect shortly after waking up. I don't have auto sleep set-up, though, only when I close the laptop so I just eject the disk prior to closing and it comes back up shortly after waking.

I haven't had any of the needing to reboot issues mentioned by anyone here. I can pull the card out and pop it back in and it is detected. Also no other errors or any issues. All the flash drives I have tried are recognized and seem to work (I haven't tried to write to these yet, though).

It has worked well for me for the last two days, most of it spent cleaning up and consolidating movies and photos from other drives to my 2TB external. I've also moved a couple large groups of files (20+ GBs in a group) and a couple of 16 GB files with good results. Streaming content to my ATV through this also had no problems.

I still cannot get my USB 3.0 hub to work. I can charge my iPad and iPhone through it, but they will not sync with iTunes. I have a decent number of different types of enclosures both USB 2.0 and 3.0 so I'll try those and see if all of those work.

 

[rev.b]

Mine disconnects on sleep (like it was unplugged) as well, but it does reconnect shortly after waking up. I don't have auto sleep set-up, though, only when I close the laptop so I just eject the disk prior to closing and it comes back up shortly after waking.

I haven't had any of the needing to reboot issues mentioned by anyone here. I can pull the card out and pop it back in and it is detected. Also no other errors or any issues. All the flash drives I have tried are recognized and seem to work (I haven't tried to write to these yet, though).

It has worked well for me for the last two days, most of it spent cleaning up and consolidating movies and photos from other drives to my 2TB external. I've also moved a couple large groups of files (20+ GBs in a group) and a couple of 16 GB files with good results. Streaming content to my ATV through this also had no problems.

I still cannot get my USB 3.0 hub to work. I can charge my iPad and iPhone through it, but they will not sync with iTunes. I have a decent number of different types of enclosures both USB 2.0 and 3.0 so I'll try those and see if all of those work.

After further testing:

- It did stop working after sleep, but apparently it does it only when connected to a USB 2.0 hub, that connects 2 external 3.5" USB 2.0 hard drives. I tried with a flash disk and an external USB 2.5" HDD and it does reconnect after sleep.

- However, you will get the "The disk was not ejected properly." message, and you have to disconnect and again connect the USB cable for it to work again. The native USB ports don't behave that way.

- I also can't get iTunes to detect my iPhone if connected to a USB 3.0 port

- I confirmed that if the card gets disconnected, I have to reboot in order to it be detected again.

This is all I get if the card gets disconnected:

However I did try every OS X USB 3.0 drivers out there before I got it to work. Maybe I got some conflicting kexts. How to get rid of them?

For now, I'm ripping a DVD with HandBrake to an external 2.0 USB HDD in order to see if that goes smoothly.

I'll try this script later http://cl.ly/code/3c0r031M023T

 

[Semiopaque]

I retested that card disconnect thing you are having, but I cannot duplicate it. I wouldn't think it would be a driver conflict issue if it works on reboot. Are you sure the card is connecting completely? I have had to pull the card all the way out and reinsert because it wouldn't recognize, but when I do that, it pops right up.

Overnight, I ran Carbon Copy from the USB 3.0 drive through this card and out to a FW800 enclosure. Was about 1.6 TB of data and I got a perfect clone.

I reformatted the FW drive and am going to run some scheduled incremental backups to this drive from the 3.0 drive connected through this card daily this week. If this works well, I want to try to find something that would keep this card in place a little more permanently - not sure what I would use, suggestions appreciated.

Although I don't think I personally need it, I would also like to fix the disconnect on sleep issue. There are a couple of apps out there that might work (they eject and/or unmount drives on sleep), but I don't really want to pay for that when I might be able to write (or find) a script or something similar. Based on the cards behavior so far, I'm pretty sure if I can eject the drives right before sleep, when the computer wakes up it will reactivate the card and remount the externals connected to it.

Aside from these minor convenience issues (for me), the only real problem I am having so far is getting this thing to work with my USB 3.0 hub.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

I downloaded the MultiBeast Mountain Lion 5.2.1 pkg, ran it and only installed the USB 3.0 drivers.

I tried this, but it yells at me for not having the downloaded Mountain Lion.app thing in some folder or the other. WTF!? I'm RUNNING Mountain Lion for god's sake and I bought it on the App Store. Exactly WTF is this file supposed to be?

Geeze, all I want is the USB 3.0 driver....

Whoops. I accidentally uncompressed the Unibeast instead (in case I want to build a Hackintosh in the future). Nevermind...

(although I'm still not sure how I get the downloaded package without it trying to install the darn thing automatically if I do want to make a bootable USB stick)

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Ok, I tried it out. It seemed to work great at first. I got speeds from my backup USB 3.0 3TB drive comparable to my primary one connected to my Mac Mini in Xbench and transferred a movie file over at around 70MB/sec. But then OSX claimed that the drive was improperly ejected (I didn't eject it) and all hell broke loose (finder locked up, etc.) I finally had to force power down the computer (nothing would respond in the finder/menu system since it was all bouncing beach ball).

I noticed the connection of this card is absolutely HORRIBLE. From what I've read, Express cards that are flush should pop out with a "spring-like" action. This thing wouldn't pop out to save it's life pushing on it. But pulling out the USB cable would (as mentioned in this thread) pull the card out with it. So I have to wonder if the card was properly seated in the first place. There doesn't seem to be much of any way to tell. Beyond that, I have no idea why it just suddenly stopped working (don't see that kind of comment here really) but frankly, I'd be afraid to use this card for fear of data loss or crashing. I really hoped it would work better.

EDIT/UPDATE:
Going on the theory that perhaps there was a bad seating of the card, I rebooted and tried again (removing the card and reinserting it here does not seem to power it back on once it's powered on and/or removed, BTW). So far it's working fine, although I did disable the "put hard disks to sleep when possible" option (which works fine with the same type of drive on the Mac Mini with built-in USB 3.0, but you never know; it does turn them off in a very short amount of time; I wish it were adjustable. Maybe it is in the shell?)

One thing I've noticed with Xbench tests is that my internal Hitachi 7200 RPM drive gets like 120MB/sec read speeds with sequential reads and the external Western Digital USB 3.0 drive gets like 70MB/sec there, but the external drive gets well over 100MB/sec reads in RANDOM reads whereas the internal only gets like 30MB/sec there giving the external drive an overall higher rating than the internal one. I can't imagine why any drive would get a higher score for random reads or writes rather than sequential.... It does the same on the Mac Mini as well so it's not a card issue or anything. It just seems strange to me.

Also I noticed on the second time that OSX was trying to Spotlight Index the 3TB drive. I put a stop to that before I continued testing. I don't know if that might have had something to do with it either.

 

[Semiopaque]

I noticed the connection of this card is absolutely HORRIBLE. From what I've read, Express cards that are flush should pop out with a "spring-like" action. This thing wouldn't pop out to save it's life pushing on it. But pulling out the USB cable would (as mentioned in this thread) pull the card out with it. So I have to wonder if the card was properly seated in the first place. There doesn't seem to be much of any way to tell. Beyond that, I have no idea why it just suddenly stopped working (don't see that kind of comment here really) but frankly, I'd be afraid to use this card for fear of data loss or crashing. I really hoped it would work better.

The only way I've been able to tell if it is properly connected is to check to see if the attached hard drive is available. My card does have a little bit of "pop" out action, but it only works if I have a USB cable in it. It also slides out way too easily if I pull on the attached cable. This is why I would like to find a solution that keeps the card in place. I'm semi tempted to superglue a thin strip of foam around the outside edge of the card to see if that keeps it in because it seems like just a tiny tug of the USB cable can disconnect the card.

My guess is that your issue with it suddenly not working was actually just the card coming out slightly. The amount of movement of the card that can cause a disconnect is almost imperceptible.

I'd really like to find out why I can pull the card out and reinsert and have it work. So far, it doesn't seem like anyone else is able to do this.

I have had no problems with data transfer. I've had CCC performing incremental backups through the card to my FW connected drive for several days. I have my MBP on a stand and it remains stationary while I do any transfers (actually they occur while I'm at work and I just see the notifications when I get home and check the file accuracy). Having said that, I would not try to do any important transfers with this card if I was moving my computer around (or even having it sit on my lap).

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

My guess is that your issue with it suddenly not working was actually just the card coming out slightly. The amount of movement of the card that can cause a disconnect is almost imperceptible.

I'm guessing that's what happened too based on the "improper eject" or whatever warning it gave and then it seemed like the light on the drive came back on. When I first put it in, I didn't know exactly how far the card would go in. It actually sits slightly recessed so it looks a bit odd (i.e. There's a slight gap between the edge of the case and the ports). I did a half an hour of transfer tests (most large files seemed to transfer around 70-75MB sec to my internal drive (which may be close to its write limit, but I really don't think so; Xbench shows up to 120MB/sec sequential writes on the Hitachi internal 7200RPM drive). Random reads on the external are over 100, though, so it's all bit strange.

In any case, my Mac Mini doesn't do much better with the same drive. I have a third drive backup at a friend's house (offsite backup) and it's the newest drive and it seems to do a little bit faster (possibly newer drives inside or something), maybe around 95-100MB/sec reads with large files. I'll probably swap that for the main drive and keep one of these as a backup there instead in the future.

In any case, I watched an entire movie and some other stuff so it was running for around 3 hours before I tried SLEEP mode. It gave the improper eject warning, but unlike when the card came loose, the drive came back up on its own a few seconds later and seems to work fine again. I imagine ejecting before setting it to sleep would avoid the warning issue. I see no way to get it to recognize the card again if I "Power Down" it, though (regardless of whether I remove the card or not, it doesn't detect it again unless I reboot). I imagine there's probably some shell command that could force it to reinitialize (certainly in Linux there was always a way to purge just about anything and reload without rebooting and so I was shocked to find OSX wants so many reboots when I first started using it. This isn't Windows for goodness sake....

Anyway, so far, so good for the hard drive on the second try. I haven't tried anything else, though. Heck, let me try now....

I just plugged my Microsoft Intellimouse (still my favorite mouse on either platform) into a USB 3.0 port. Somewhat to my surprise, it's working just fine. I guess that was just the early card reports that didn't seem to work with anything but USB 3.0 drives and the like. I surely could use more USB ports on the Macbook Pro in general (the last hub I tried didn't wake from sleep properly at all and so it was a PITA and I quit using it; I've got a Belkin 7-port on my Mac Mini that I used on my PowerMac before that and it works fine, though so I should probably get another one.

I don't normally use too many USB devices on the Macbook, though. I got a new webcam for the Mini (Logitech B910 720P HD) and so I have an extra Logitech 9000 I can plug into the docked setup here. I discovered (after I bought the B910 that Webcam settings from the App store can get the regular 9000 out of the slow-frame movement "right light" mode using the exposure slider. If Skype switches resolutions it will turn back on, but once it's stable just select the setting again gets it smooth once more so I can make use of the old one again here). I wish someone had told me that fixes the 9000 for smooth motion. I might not have spent $60+ on the new one, but it does a nice 720P wide with stereo sound so it's still nice and gives no trouble with Skype, etc. (although Facetime sometimes gets a little stuck frame fit thing going so I tend not to use it; Skype has no such issue but uses more CPU for 720P).

I'd really like to find out why I can pull the card out and reinsert and have it work. So far, it doesn't seem like anyone else is able to do this.

I wonder if you have something else in your OS setup that refreshes the bus scan some how. I know I probably have a lot of leftover crap since I moved from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. I tend to modify things a bit (XtraFinder, restoring library views in the shell, etc.) so I never know if something might interfere, but it's been pretty stable.

My regular backup is to a 500GB FW800 drive so I won't be doing a backup test, although I suppose I could try a backup from one 3TB drive to another using both ports (kind of don't want to risk something going wrong there, though at least until I get the 3rd drive updated again here just in case).

EDIT:

Yup, ejecting the drive gets rid of any warning and the drive comes back up about 10 seconds after waking from sleep. I left the mouse plugged in and it came up fine too at the same time. I also switched putting drives to sleep when possible back on and it slept and woke up fine so I definitely think the card wasn't seated right the first time.

It does amaze me that I have USB 3.0 ports on a 2008 Macbook Pro while a 2011 one doesn't have them and can't add them short of a Thunderbolt hub (which never seem to come out). I think it was a big mistake getting rid of the Express Ports. USB 3.0 for $11? Sheesh. I'll take that over a stupid SD card slot any day!

Sadly, I was unable to unplug a USB port with both jacks in use without pulling the card by accident....ugh. There was nowhere left to put my finger. It's the card's worst drawback, IMO. If it would recognize the card again when inserted, it wouldn't be such a big deal here.

Another Edit:

OK....I spoke too soon. Here's a weird one for you. If I put the computer to sleep, when I wake it up, the card IS recognized again (without a reboot). I guess that beats rebooting.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Well, one thing is for sure. That USB 3.0 card doesn't like the Logitech 9000 Pro camera. It kernel panics when you try to use it.

 

[yusukeaoki]

Has anyone so far had problem with this method?
Do you all face KP often?

I got pretty good amount of USB3 external drives and want to use this method but I dont want to face KP while copying/transfering file...