USB 3.0 Express Card Driver + Kext Wizard?

I found, what appears to be a reasonable solution, for adding a couple of USB 3.0 ports to my mid-2010 MBP, without making it look silly, i.e. this Express Card is not sticking out, just like my current SD card reader one, so as close to built-in port(s) appearance as could be.

So far, so good. However, the card arrived, and so is an email with a driver package Not a pleasant surprise, I must say:






I would never install anything unknown on my system anyway, but the Kext Wizard and reboot instructions are particularly alarming.

Is there a trustworthy source of a driver for this card, which, I presume, will not function correctly without one?

Seems like all that "Kext Wizard" does is set permissions on the new kexts and rebuild the cache. Pretty much same thing Onyx would do except for the new kext.
Is this from a reputable company?

cradom said:

Is this from a reputable company?

Click to expand...

That's the problem - it's from eBay Anyway, the seller is just that - a seller, they might not be aware, if there's a malicious component in the driver package ...

I've searched for the same card from other suppliers and didn't find any. There's a Sonnet card, but it's got that horrible square blob outside - can't stand those things not to mention, it is not practical - I have had my Sonnet multi-card reader ExpressCard34 in my MBP for four years, never had to remove it, as you can't really tell it's there - that's what I want with USB3 card too:


existing card inserted


both cards - the existing multi-card reader and the new USB3 card



As much as I want to add two USB 3.0 ports to my system, I'm not going to risk it running unknown code on the [main and only] system.

Anyone willing to examine this package on a test machine with packet sniffer and suchlike? Just to make sure it doesn't do anything nasty ... It's a small size zip file (1.3 MB), easy to email ... I'd be really grateful

Check this out: On Orbit » Blog Archive » Adding a USB 3.0 Expresscard/34 to your MacBook Pro

Excellent, thank you Craig!

Exactly what I wanted: kext from a trusted source and a few lines in Terminal, knowing precisely what am I actually letting into my system. Great stuff.

It worked fine too, and I now have two USB 3.0 full-speed ports (if you look at BSD name for the drive, you'll know why I'm happy):





I also quite like the little icon in Menu Bar - so I can power down the ExpressCard when required. Neat



Thanks again, really appreciate your help

Glad I could help.

@David:

You did notice that it doesn't work with the Yosemite beta and that you may have to wait awhile before it works with the full release of 10.10?

chscag said:

You did notice that it doesn't work with the Yosemite beta and that you may have to wait awhile before it works with the full release of 10.10?

Click to expand...

Yes thanks, in fact some posts (and eBay seller's description too) said it might not work with mid-2010 MBP 17" at all ... I was willing to chance it, for the little money it cost.

As far as Yosemite - I'm not usually the one to jump into a new version right away, however exciting some new features might be. I actually went from 10.7.5 to 10.9.2 for my last upgrade ... also at some point I'd have to conclude that, this laptop has reached its limit of OS upgradability, most likely to happen well before Apple tells me so.

A very brief follow-up...

There are a couple of peculiarities to running this USB 3.0 Express Card and [updated to v.2.2.7] Generic USB kext:

• There's no soft power down of connected volumes, when system goes to sleep (laptop lid down), therefore manual unmount / eject is required
  
• Sometimes the card loses power momentarily, when MagSafe power lead is disconnected, resulting in volumes being ejected, while still mounted
  
• Plugging and unplugging USB cables has to be done very gently - push the plug in to firmly, and the express card is ejected! Pull the cable, without holding the express card in, and it will drag the card with it. Not what you want, particularly, when there's a second drive plugged in.

Also I get a system warning: "Kernel extension is not from an identified developer" ... but still be loaded. Fine, but this only happens during CCC clone of the main volume and the path in the warning is of the backup volume. How can any kext be loaded from a backup drive? If I don't run the clone, I don't get the warning. Maybe I should boot from the clone and run 755 & root:wheel for the kext on it? Although it is a full clone, so that shouldn't be necessary ... Rather puzzled by this one.

All in all, not an entirely satisfying experience - fiddly, capricious and kind of distinctly non-Apple, if that makes sense.

I have yet to do a comparison test with FW800, to see if it is actually that much faster ON THIS MACHINE. If it is not, and somehow I suspect it might not be, I'll just get a few more WD MyPassport 2TB FW800 drives and get rid of this card ...

USB 3.0 OSX Software 2.2.7.pkg

You do well informing yourself prior to install the driver. Indeed, I did the very same thing.

I bought the card (and software on October 2013) and since then the provider updated the driver not once but twice.

Now, I can say that this driver and stuff work perfectly on Lion, Maverick and now on Yosemite.

The card itself is a generic one (you can buy it for USD $7,00 anywhere else). However, the driver seems to be a genuine creation work of the seller or at least a smart adaptation of a Lacie driver. I did pay USD $25 for the driver and it's worth every dollar.

I strongly recommend this seller.

Just as he says: " If you have any questions or problem , just email/message me is ok ( [email protected] ), Have Fun !!"

He is a really responsible and committed seller. Just email him ( [email protected] )

If you want a USB3,0 Port use this driver with confidence!


Anyone who needs to confirm this information, feel free to email me.

Cordially

[email protected]

Actually, I ditched the card around end of August - however accomplished the driver might be, it does not address the hardware limitations (sleep mode support in particular) and general low built quality, as mentioned in my last post above ...

Basically, I am not willing to ruin my happy Apple computing experience with crappy hardware add-on, just to gain a slight speed increase for a couple of external drives.

I have now added three more WD MyPassport 2TB FW800 drives and the whole setup works perfectly