Using External Storage Devices with the iPad

[yof]

Hey,

So I got my package today with the few small accessories I had ordered.

I received:
An SD card connection adapter
A USB hub
And the iHustler

I tested these items out to see what I could do with them.

With the SD card connection kit I could connect and mount SD cards and micro SD cards with SD card adapters up to 16GB in size.

With the USB hub I was able to connect a 4GB flash drive by itself, a 2GB flash drive by itself, and both at the same time. I tried to connect two 4GB drives at the same time and it crashed my iPad each time, so that didn't work. I also tried connecting 2 4GB drives and a 2GB drive at the same time and that didn't work either. It didn't crash my device but it wouldn't mount them.

With the iHustler I wasn't able to convert the power from a flash drive so as for my iPad to mount it. It appears the only transfer you can do with it is power, no data. However it does make it so I can charge my idevices with normally incompatible mediums.

So that's what I found out in testing these items out. Hope that helps someone looking into it.

Note: The USB hub had an input for a power supply. Since one wasn't included and I don't think I have a compatible one, I can't test it out, but with it plugged in you could possibly mount any external storage device that can connect with a USB and doesn't use it's own power.

So it works as a third party CCK right? And thanks for the helpful enormous information on the gaming aspects and set up to testing out the iHustler kit! I also renewed a portion of the guide !

 

[TylerThomas]

What do you mean? The SD card connection adapter?

Both the USB Connection adapter and SD card connection adapter I have are third-party CCK products. At the site I got them from you can get connection adapters for just about any kind of memory card as well not just SD cards.

Or are you talking about the USB hub? Because that works in connecting up to 6GB of flash drives without external power. It can also theoretically connect three different storage devices at the same time (it just has 3 USB ports, but it also has a 30-pin connector for charging), which could amount to a decent amount of space, if you used an AC adapter with it. This would be handy fir transferring files and media between multiple storage devices and your iPad with out having to disconnect and reconnect and so on, or accessing files from multiple storage devices with one mount by your iPad. When you connect multiple storage devices with it, it shows however many devices you have connected in the devices tab of iFile.

But like I said, you can also use memory sticks, micro SD cards, etc. with the connection adapters available at the site I bought these little gadgets from. So I might add that to your list as well.

 

[TylerThomas]

And I really would include network drives just make the list and tutorial more complete.

There are at least three makers that are compatible with an iPad. I can't remember one of them but Seagate and Western Digital both have network drives that you can use to store files and media externally for your iPad.

The Goflex Home is Seagate's network drive, and the My Book Live and My Book Live Duo are WD network drives.

I know you didn't like these kinds of drives, but I use one and don't have any problems with it, and it would make your list more complete to include them. Other people might find good use for them. I personally find my WD MBL superior to the Goflex Satellite, but you included it in the updated list.

Anyway, just a thought.

 

[yof]

What do you mean? The SD card connection adapter?

Both the USB Connection adapter and SD card connection adapter I have are third-party CCK products. At the site I got them from you can get connection adapters for just about any kind of memory card as well not just SD cards.

Or are you talking about the USB hub? Because that works in connecting up to 6GB of flash drives without external power. It can also theoretically connect three different storage devices at the same time (it just has 3 USB ports, but it also has a 30-pin connector for charging), which could amount to a decent amount of space, if you used an AC adapter with it. This would be handy fir transferring files and media between multiple storage devices and your iPad with out having to disconnect and reconnect and so on, or accessing files from multiple storage devices with one mount by your iPad. When you connect multiple storage devices with it, it shows however many devices you have connected in the devices tab of iFile.

But like I said, you can also use memory sticks, micro SD cards, etc. with the connection adapters available at the site I bought these little gadgets from. So I might add that to your list as well.

This is very interesting. Connecting several media storage devices with a USB hub. I'm surprised it is shown on iFile. But I suspect the transfer is slower if connected to the iPad than the computer. Or I could be wrong and the hard drives itself (if connected with multiples) could be using their own rpm speed with up and down speeds. Interesting stuff! To clarify the iHustler is just another third party CCK right?

And I really would include network drives just make the list and tutorial more complete.

There are at least three makers that are compatible with an iPad. I can't remember one of them but Seagate and Western Digital both have network drives that you can use to store files and media externally for your iPad.

The Goflex Home is Seagate's network drive, and the My Book Live and My Book Live Duo are WD network drives.

I know you didn't like these kinds of drives, but I use one and don't have any problems with it, and it would make your list more complete to include them. Other people might find good use for them. I personally find my WD MBL superior to the Goflex Satellite, but you included it in the updated list.

Anyway, just a thought.

Haha, well if the hard drives improve, I won't know unless they get better reviews next year. I am against hard drives nowadays, I wish they can push SSD drives out to the average consumer pricing with more storage (might be a year or two). I don't trust physical connection. I just bought an airstash and a 128GB Lexar SDXC card recently, awaiting on it though. I'm going to check out the My Book Live and My Book Live Duo and add them to the list. Earlier in the posts, did you own a GoFlex Satellite? What do you think of it compared to WD MBL? I seen on GoFlex Satellite on Amazon they have horrible reviews. I'm also going to get a G-Connect for my Car, they don't have much reviews, which is hard for me to see if they are better or worse than the suggested devices. But yeah fantastic interesting type of connections you have with the USB hub.

Wow this is interesting sorry to burst your bubble but seems like a lot of people are having problems with the WD MBL

 

[TallahasseeLassie]

Hi

What is a G-Connect for your car?

Thanks.

 

[yof]

Hi

What is a G-Connect for your car?

Thanks.

G-Connect is one of the wireless storage drives that I listed in section VI. Base on specs and what it has. I'll be able to connect it to my car to power it up with 500GB of storage and using ad-hoc with it's secured connection. I can use it to stream video/music what so ever for storage like iCloud but without internet. I then can also upload documents to it while doing work related things. And I can take it out and use it as a router, like one reviewer said, he can turn it into a router with the ethernet option that they have for the G-Connect drive! I know it's a lot of details but I pick it out of the other ones because I see less issues with it than the others also allowing me that much of a storage for a good price!

 

[TylerThomas]

This is very interesting. Connecting several media storage devices with a USB hub. I'm surprised it is shown on iFile. But I suspect the transfer is slower if connected to the iPad than the computer. Or I could be wrong and the hard drives itself (if connected with multiples) could be using their own rpm speed with up and down speeds. Interesting stuff! To clarify the iHustler is just another third party CCK right?

Well, without an AC adapter, you could take 3 2GB flash drives or a 2GB flash drive and a 4GB flash drive And connect them at the same time and then transfer files from them to you iPad and between them. With an AC adapter you could mount portable hard drives, 8GB and up flash drives, etc. because it would remove the power limitations. About the speeds, I'm not sure other than to say the ports are typically 2.0 USB ports.

And no, the iHustler is a power converter of some sort. What it does is allow you to charge your iPad with normally incompatible chargers. I was confused as to what all you could do with it. It is limited to power transfer and not able to send/receive data. So it wouldn't work for overcoming the power limitations with 8GB and up flash drives, but like I said a USB hub with an AC adapter would be able to do that.

Haha, well if the hard drives improve, I won't know unless they get better reviews next year. I am against hard drives nowadays, I wish they can push SSD drives out to the average consumer pricing with more storage (might be a year or two). I don't trust physical connection. I just bought an airstash and a 128GB Lexar SDXC card recently, awaiting on it though. I'm going to check out the My Book Live and My Book Live Duo and add them to the list. Earlier in the posts, did you own a GoFlex Satellite? What do you think of it compared to WD MBL? I seen on GoFlex Satellite on Amazon they have horrible reviews. I'm also going to get a G-Connect for my Car, they don't have much reviews, which is hard for me to see if they are better or worse than the suggested devices. But yeah fantastic interesting type of connections you have with the USB hub.

Wow this is interesting sorry to burst your bubble but seems like a lot of people are having problems with the WD MBL

<img src="http://www.ipadforums.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=21101"/>

How would you use the Lexar SDXC card with your iPad?

I owned a Goflex Satellite and used it extensively. They have less storage capacity than a MBL, the cost is inflated, and the app is not at all near as good. A big thing that I really like about the MBL is the app for it. You can do nearly anything you could want to with the media and files on it from your iPad. In my experience Seagate products are of a sub-par quality and the customer service isn't very good either. Western Digital however has a system set up where they implement any idea and suggestion of their customers if the idea or suggestion gets enough votes from other customers.

And you can almost always troubleshoot any problem you come across with a Western Digital drive at their forum online. So I don't see why people would be complaining so much about anything to do with it.

 

[TallahasseeLassie]

G-Connect is one of the wireless storage drives that I listed in section VI. Base on specs and what it has. I'll be able to connect it to my car to power it up with 500GB of storage and using ad-hoc with it's secured connection. I can use it to stream video/music what so ever for storage like iCloud but without internet. I then can also upload documents to it while doing work related things. And I can take it out and use it as a router, like one reviewer said, he can turn it into a router with the ethernet option that they have for the G-Connect drive! I know it's a lot of details but I pick it out of the other ones because I see less issues with it than the others also allowing me that much of a storage for a good price!

Thank you. I apologise for not reading the rest of the thread. Love this forum!

 

[yof]

Well, without an AC adapter, you could take 3 2GB flash drives or a 2GB flash drive and a 4GB flash drive And connect them at the same time and then transfer files from them to you iPad and between them. With an AC adapter you could mount portable hard drives, 8GB and up flash drives, etc. because it would remove the power limitations. About the speeds, I'm not sure other than to say the ports are typically 2.0 USB ports.

And no, the iHustler is a power converter of some sort. What it does is allow you to charge your iPad with normally incompatible chargers. I was confused as to what all you could do with it. It is limited to power transfer and not able to send/receive data. So it wouldn't work for overcoming the power limitations with 8GB and up flash drives, but like I said a USB hub with an AC adapter would be able to do that.



How would you use the Lexar SDXC card with your iPad?

I owned a Goflex Satellite and used it extensively. They have less storage capacity than a MBL, the cost is inflated, and the app is not at all near as good. A big thing that I really like about the MBL is the app for it. You can do nearly anything you could want to with the media and files on it from your iPad. In my experience Seagate products are of a sub-par quality and the customer service isn't very good either. Western Digital however has a system set up where they implement any idea and suggestion of their customers if the idea or suggestion gets enough votes from other customers.

And you can almost always troubleshoot any problem you come across with a Western Digital drive at their forum online. So I don't see why people would be complaining so much about anything to do with it.

Lexar SDXC with the Airstash. The V02 version (newer one) supports SDXC cards up to 2TB. I know it sounds and is reduntant to use a SD card for storage. But being more paranoid about data lost I'm going to give up on hard drives. Like I said until SSD hard drives come out to the level where the current ones are now. Oh btw if you thought I was going to use the Lexar SDXC with CCK I'm not. lol I know that's not possible atm until Apple refresh the CCK for that support. Maybe someone with a mod can try to tweak CCK with the card reader sdxc capable hardware.

But yeah I do agree that WD's customer support is very helpful and their forums are very active (too active with problems if you ask me). But yeah, if you say MBL support from the App is good, I'll take your word for it. Btw what is the App for WD MBL capable of? Upload? Download? Edit files? Stream? Anything it can't do? I gotta look into that tonight.



Oh yeah TylerThomas, can you take pictures of your iHustler and how you use it, a few of USB hubs with multiple usb sticks inserted, and USB hub with some hard drives inserted with ifile picture of it mounted? That would be great to see!


@ THLassie, people like you and their comments make it great!

 

[TylerThomas]

Lexar SDXC with the Airstash. The V02 version (newer one) supports SDXC cards up to 2TB. I know it sounds and is reduntant to use a SD card for storage. But being more paranoid about data lost I'm going to give up on hard drives. Like I said until SSD hard drives come out to the level where the current ones are now. Oh btw if you thought I was going to use the Lexar SDXC with CCK I'm not. lol I know that's not possible atm until Apple refresh the CCK for that support. Maybe someone with a mod can try to tweak CCK with the card reader sdxc capable hardware.

But yeah I do agree that WD's customer support is very helpful and their forums are very active (too active with problems if you ask me). But yeah, if you say MBL support from the App is good, I'll take your word for it. Btw what is the App for WD MBL capable of? Upload? Download? Edit files? Stream? Anything it can't do? I gotta look into that tonight.

Oh yeah TylerThomas, can you take pictures of your iHustler and how you use it, a few of USB hubs with multiple usb sticks inserted, and USB hub with some hard drives inserted with ifile picture of it mounted? That would be great to see!

@ THLassie, people like you and their comments make it great!

So, I don't know much about Airstash. What exactly is it, and what all can you do with it? And it's not silly to me you are using an SD card, you gotta pick something if you want external storage. But anyway, I didn't know how you were going to use the card, that's why I was asking. And I might actually be able to find an SDXC card capable connection kit. Like I was trying to tell you in one of my other posts, I know of a couple sites where you can get third-party connection kits at really low prices that work fine and some of which allow you to use memory cards that you can't use with Apple's CCK. Like Memory Sticks, micro SD cards, etc.. I'll check out what all they have when I'm done with this post and get back to you about it with a more comprehensive list.

I don't really get what your big problem with the WD network drives are, but anyway, you don't have to use them obviously if you don't want to. And I honestly don't have any problems with mine and that would be why I say some of the things I do about it. At least as far as network drives go themselves the WD ones are the best on the market, I feel not just in my opinion, but in actuality. I'm only as pleasant about them as I am because of the good experience I've had with them. Compared to the other methods for increasing the storage capacity of an iPad that I've tried out the WD MBL was the best so far for at least certain things that I would like to use such a thing for. Much better to me than anything Seagate makes.

There are two main apps for a WD network product:

WD 2go
And WD Photos

The current version of WD 2go is capable of the following:

Streaming video
Streaming music
Displaying photos
Displaying .txt documents
Opening ebooks in ebook reader, etc. applications such as iBooks
Opening documents in office, etc. applications such as QuickOffice
Downloading any media or file for offline use (which can be retrieved in iFile, which is to say, you can use the media or file for anything that the WD 2go app can do otherwise, and can do anything else you could with it via a jailbreak with iFile)
Opening music in music editing or video editing, etc. applications such as djay or iMovie
Opening video in video editing, etc. applications again such as iMovie
Opening normally incompatible video or music in player applications developed for such things
Uploading media and files from your iPad to your network drive
AirPlaying any video, music, photos, etc. to your Apple TV
Opening photos in photo editing, etc. applications such as Snapseed or PS Touch
Editing file names
Opening any other kind of file in any compatible application
Deleting files
Uploading to Dropbox
Emailing file as attachment
Emailing file as a link
Etc.

With WD Photos you can do all the same with your photos but can also save them to camera roll, post them to Facebook, etc..

All of which I would mention verily trumps the capabilities of the Seagate Apps for their network drives and even the Goflex Satellite. (I've used these as well)

And I think you're still confused about the iHustler (?). It's not capable of doing anything that expands or utilizes storage devices. I thought I had explained that well enough. It's just a power converter of some kind that overcomes the power limitations that Apple placed on their devices preventing them from being charged with certain third-party charging devices.

I can take some pictures of some of my stuff and I'll post them with some updated information on those CCKs I was talking about in a little while.

But anyway WD also makes TV network products that can be used with their network drives called the TV Live and TV Live Hub. With these you can stream any media from your drive on your TV as well as use other streaming applications like the other TV streaming devices are capable of. The only difference being between the two is that the TV Live is just a streamer and the TV Live Hub is a streamer with a built in 1TB hard drive. They also make an N900 router that has a built in 1TB hard drive for network storage.

I'll be back in a few with that stuff.

 

[TylerThomas]

Ok so first I'll show you some pics of the connection kits I was talking about:



This is a picture of a 5 in 1 connection kit.

It can read/write the following types of memory cards:

TF
M2
MMC
MS
SD

And it also has a USB port.

 

[TylerThomas]

This little buddy is pretty special.

With this you can read/write the following memory cards:

SDHC
SDXC
Mini SD
MMC
MMC 4.0
MS
MS Pro
MS Duo
MS Duo MagicGate
M2
Micro SD/T-Flash

It also has 3 high speed USB ports with which you can connect cameras, keyboards, hard drives, etc. and they all work at the same time.

 

[TylerThomas]

This is the USB hub I have.





This is the CCK I have. (which cost $10.00)





This is the iHustler.







This is two USB flash drives connected and mounted to my iPad as shown in iFile and a picture of what the set up looks like.

 

[yof]

Airstash basically streams what sd card you insert into it. And it creates a live ad-hoc for about 5 hours or endlessly if plugged in. CloudFTP does the same but instead of a sdcard insert, it has USB.


Wow. Amazing stuff. Can you demostrate with hooking a keyboard and a hard drive and working both of them?

 

[TylerThomas]

Airstash basically streams what sd card you insert into it. And it creates a live ad-hoc for about 5 hours or endlessly if plugged in. CloudFTP does the same but instead of a sdcard insert, it has USB.

Wow. Amazing stuff. Can you demostrate with hooking a keyboard and a hard drive and working both of them?

I see,

So it connects via wifi? Where do you get your SDXC cards? Are they at a reasonable price where you get them?

And no I can't show you that. I don't own that particular device I was just showing it to you for reference. I think you should add the additional memory cards to your list because of those devices. You should also add portable hard drives because of their potential use with a USB hub and an AC adapter. And again I would add network dives. I just think you should make the list exhaustive so people know what all their options are.

But did you notice, that you can use an SDXC card with that one kit you were interested in? I'm thinking about maybe getting one of those kits. There a little more expensive than the more simpler ones but still reasonably priced for what all they can do I feel.

Anyway, I'd like to figure out some more uses for these things and such.