Accessing stuff from an external hdd WITHOUT copying it over to the iPad2 ?

[MichelleD]

Hiya, I know external hard drives can be hooked up to iPads, but I haven't found one that doesn't require you to copy the files on the external hdd onto the iPad.

I have a 16gb iPad 2 I received as a present (well more like my mom received it, but she has some weird motion sickness where seeing the swiping motion causes her to get extremely naughtious). So she gave it to me... Anyway..

I'd love to have a bit more space for it, by way of an external hdd, but if I have to copy the files from the hdd onto my iPad it kind of defeats the purpose.

So, in a nutshell, are there any external hard drives that don't require coping the files onto your iPad?? Jail broken is not an issue either ~ Neither is formatting the external hdd.

Thanks for all the help, you guys are so helpful!!

 

[drb_52]

Take a look at the seagate goflex satellite. Its a 500 gb portable hard drive. If you want to hack it, you can write to it from the ipad.
There are other options too, like the airstash or kingston wi drive. Their capacity is a lot smaller.
The other option that comes to mind is a network attached storage (NAS) hard drive. I've found that I can stream some files, like photo slide shows. Movies are not usually easy to watch when streamed from the NAS.

I have a hacked goflex and it works very well. I would recommend it for streaming movies.

 

[kendo123]

Have a look at APOTOP DW09 just got one im in the UK it is very good just plug in a USB stick or harddrive or a SD card from your digital camera etc and you can access the files from ipad or iphone with the app downloaded from the app store or any wifi device via a browser and you can also upload from ipad etc as well as stream or download. Battery lasts 3 hr and can be charged by usb on pc or mac or just use your ios device charger, well worth £29.99 i paid for it.