I have a Retina MacBook Pro coming in (hopefully! ) a few weeks, and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for a USB 3.0 Blu-ray drive for it. I know of several USB 2.0 drives that people have said are compatible with the native software in Mac OS X for burning and reading (not movies!), but, considering USB 3.0 is a new feature on Macs, I haven't found any reviews for USB 3.0 Blu-ray drives that mention Macs.

While you can find quite a few Blu-ray burners for Windows, it is not always easy to find an exclusive Blu-ray burner for Mac. Sea Tech aluminum is such an external USB Blu-ray burner super drive for Apple MacBook Air, Pro, iMac.

Is a USB 3.0 drive worth the risk, or should I just stick with the USB 2.0 ones for now? Does anyone have any suggestions for a particular drive? Click to expand.Don't forget that portable BR writers are either 6x or 8x, which means a max theoretical speed of n X 4.5 MB/s. This equates to 27 MB/s and 36 MB/s respectively. USB has a real world speed of around 35 to 40 MB/s. Thereofore USB 2 is good enough for these drives.

Some desktop BR drives are 12x, which is a theoretical speed of 54 MB/s. This is a bit more than USB 2 can handle, but eSATA can handle it easily. USB 3 is overkill. The difference in real world speed in using a 12x drive via USB 2 vs 3 is not worth the price difference in my opinion.

Maybe it's different in the US, but USB 3 BR drivers are quite a lot more expensive than USB 2 models in the UK. I use an LG BR 12x external writer, which has eSATA and USB 2. I've used it a lot using both connections and the real world difference is not huge.

Unless you are burning BRs or ripping movies all day long, I don't consider USB 3 connectivity a necessity. Theortical speeds are great, but in the real world the LG burns at around 7.1x using eSATA and at about 5.4x over USB 2. It's not enough for me to pull out the Lacie eSATA TB hub when I am using the burner. Don't forget that portable BR writers are either 6x or 8x, which means a max theoretical speed of n X 4.5 MB/s.

This equates to 27 MB/s and 36 MB/s respectively. USB has a real world speed of around 35 to 40 MB/s. Thereofore USB 2 is good enough for these drives.

Some desktop BR drives are 12x, which is a theoretical speed of 54 MB/s. This is a bit more than USB 2 can handle, but eSATA can handle it easily. USB 3 is overkill. The difference in real world speed in using a 12x drive via USB 2 vs 3 is not worth the price difference in my opinion. Maybe it's different in the US, but USB 3 BR drivers are quite a lot more expensive than USB 2 models in the UK.

I use an LG BR 12x external writer, which has eSATA and USB 2. I've used it a lot using both connections and the real world difference is not huge. Unless you are burning BRs or ripping movies all day long, I don't consider USB 3 connectivity a necessity. Theortical speeds are great, but in the real world the LG burns at around 7.1x using eSATA and at about 5.4x over USB 2. It's not enough for me to pull out the Lacie eSATA TB hub when I am using the burner. Most of the time with external optical drives, the limiting factors are usually the drives themselves and not the enclosure.

The only real way to tell is to take 'this specific model optical drive' and place it inside a USB2 enclosure, test and then place it inside a USB3 enclosure and test. @ Tomasmekean You went from a portable laptop low power bus powered optical drive to a desktop optical drive with more power. In almost every instance a device that plugs into AC power will be faster and more powerful than those that use power from a USB port. I've been asking myself this same question before deciding on which BR drive to buy for my Mac for ripping my Bluray collection. My Mac has USB 3.0, but as the others have pointed out, it may not be worth the price. For example, that LG Bluray drive mentioned above from Best Buy seems fast on the surface (pun intended), but it's BR read speed is still only 8X.