Recommendations for USB 3 ExpressCard/34 There is a proliferation of portable and cheap portable USB 3 drives nowadays and nothing of the sort for Thunderbolt.
I was wondering if it is worth my while getting an ExpressCard/34 USB 3 card for my 17" Macbook Pro, to tide me over until some reasonably priced Thunderbolt drives come out.  

I did a quick search and found a few drawbacks of the ExpressCard/34 USB 3 solution.


It appears you need an external power supply according to this article http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=5985&amp;review=aluratek+usb+3+expresscard+adapter
Can anyone confirm this? That would be a pain, since I want to use portable drives, avoiding separate power supplies.
Performance is not as good using USB 3 through ExpressCard (although it is much better than USB 2, so this is not so much of a problem).
The need for drivers. Lacie provides one. http://www.lacie.com/au/more/index.htm?id=10112
Ugly (I'll forgive this one, since this is a temporary solution until Thunderbolt drives arrive).


Does anyone have any experience with a USB 3 ExpressCard?
Can you recommend one?
My biggest blocking point is the need for an external power supply. Is there any card that doesn't require external power for USB 3.0 speeds? (Lacie don't mention this on their website as far as I can see).

Please don't answer with suggestions about Firewire. I currently have several Firewire 800 drives. This question is specifically about ExpressCard/34 USB 3.
You'll need a power supply.
The express card slot has a gross transfer speed of 2.5Gbit/s.
3rd party hardware kernel extensions (drivers) are horrible (expect kernel panics and maybe even data loss).
The LaCie adapter will only work with LaCie drives. Use of any other drive will cause a crash.


It's simply not worth it.