Expresscard Slot 34 -> USB 3.0 Adapter

[martinnoweck]

any recommendations?

best wishes and kind regards,
martin

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The Sonnet one is garbage, don't do it.

The SIIG one works pretty good on Windows, not recognized under OSX last time I tried (over a year ago). Like most EC34 cards, they tend to pop out easily and these don't supply bus power to the USB3 ports.

StarTechCom has one as well, but have not tried it.

 

[martinnoweck]

Thanks Jeff - what happened with the Sonnet one?
best wishes and kind regards,
Martin

 

[Ian Tetzner]

I have had this StarTech USB 3 expresscard for my Windows laptop for about six months now.
http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-ExpressCard-SuperSpeed-Adapter-ECUSB3S22/dp/B006K25AX4
No issues so far.
- Ian

 

[martinnoweck]

Thanks Ian.
I apologize the misunderstanding - I am looking for MacBook Pro ;-)

best wishes and kind regards,
Martin

 

[martinnoweck]

ok, i get something like 35 MB/s with the sonnet usb3 express card - is this normal or the reason you call it garbage, Jeff?

best wishes and kind regards,
martin

 

[ericyoung]

Caldigit one works on Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard. Expresscard 34 bandwidth is probably the bottleneck even if the card provides USB3.0 connectivity though.

Haven't measured the throughput though, as only got it for the connectivity.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

ok, i get something like 35 MB/s with the sonnet usb3 express card - is this normal or the reason you call it garbage, Jeff?

best wishes and kind regards,
martin

Been a while since I tried the Sonnet, but I never got it to work reliably enough to even use it.

Depending which Mac you're using this with, it will support either PCIe v1 mode or v2 mode. AFAIK, the Sonnet card is only PCIe v1 mode anyway. Basically what this means, is if the card (or the slot on your system) is limited to v1, your maximum throughput is 1.6Gbps or 150MB/s. If the slot is ExpressCard 2.0 compliant, meaning PCIe v2 and the card supports that, your bandwidth doubles to 300MB/s maximum.

Also beware the many cards out there that use the USB2.0 pass-thru in the ExpressCard spec. I don't know of any that specifically do this, but I've heard they're out there. Not sure why you would only be getting 35MB/s, could be a multitude of reasons though.

IIRC, the only editions of Macbook Pro that supported ExpressCard 2.0 were the mid 2009 thru early 2010 series. Should be two models of 17" and one 13" and 15", but I would have to go re-visit specs to know for sure. And then the ExpressCard slot was disbanded..