Hi this has probably been asked so I'm sorry if I'm a pain! I'm not a great tech whizz...

I want to buy an adapter which allows me to connect my hard drive and my flash drive to my ipad to save my documents on and take to uni, rather than emailing them all the time (granted this is not difficult but I would rather have one). I also have wireless speakers for my laptop which are run off a USB dongle and would like to use them with my Ipad. Would this work with a USB adapter?

So what do I buy? I have looked online but I am getting confused with all this lightning stuff..? I that what I need to go for?

Thanks in advance

Originally Posted by gwhitehead

Hi this has probably been asked so I'm sorry if I'm a pain! I'm not a great tech whizz...

I want to buy an adapter which allows me to connect my hard drive and my flash drive to my ipad to save my documents on and take to uni, rather than emailing them all the time (granted this is not difficult but I would rather have one). I also have wireless speakers for my laptop which are run off a USB dongle and would like to use them with my Ipad. Would this work with a USB adapter?

So what do I buy? I have looked online but I am getting confused with all this lightning stuff..? I that what I need to go for?

Thanks in advance

You can't directly connect a hard drive or a flash drive to your iPad. A non jailbroken iPad doesn't accept input that way. USB dongles don't work either. The iPad doesn't supply enough power to run most flash drives.

Try using DropBox. It's great for what you want to do re: documents

Tere's also network attached storage. What is NAS and what can it do for you?

I don't know why Apple makes it so difficult to transfer data.

Okay, I have various cloud services including 50GB Dropbox & Box accounts plus Google Drive and iCloud but:-
1. Some of my data files are large and I don't want to waste my precious cellular download limit on cloud services.
2. I can't always guarantee where I will be would have a decent cellular network.

As such I can't rely on cellular for data transfer.

I don't get any of these issues with any of my Android hardware. Plug it in and transfer.... Simple, job done.