True, but it's timings are different. It first tries to communicate using 3.0 and switches to 2.0 when that fails.
I tried the western digital passport drives on my wii and had nothing but problems with those.
That's when I noticed that not all "western digital passport" drives are alike.
Besides that, on wii, you could try to use it on it's native ios 58 usb 2.0, or on the usb 2.0 code of a cios which both gave different results.
Some older emulator forwarders could still use an older ios that even didn't supported usb 2.0. Neek had it's own buildin usb code which again was different.
The usb code improved and stuff was added to keep the harddisk spinning... (The spindown was a known problem).
I assume the Wiiu vwii is less critical in it's harddisk choices as it's supporting a harddisk in Wiiu mode. It seems to be more critical when it comes to the harddisk power consumption. If your disk needs more startup current, you will need an y cable to connect it with an additional plug to steal power from a second usb port.