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All iPads External hard drive or SSD for iPad 9.7 inch 5th generation which one will work without extra power ?

M

max2

macrumors 603
Original poster
May 31, 2015
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Basically want the iPad to be able to power the drive totally if possible.
 
Is there anyway around this where the external hard drive or SSD has a small built in battery backup for at least 10 hours of runtime ?
 
max2 said:
Is there anyway around this where the external hard drive or SSD has a small built in battery backup for at least 10 hours of runtime ?
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Can't say without trying it. Even some small flash drives are hit or miss on whether they need additional power to operate.
 
Thanks that sucks. I wish some review site tested different external portable hard drives and SSD to see if any of them worked with a basic iPad.
 
Yes I find that none of my external drives work with my iPad Air 3. Have not tried with powered usb hub yet. I guess it’s the limitation of lightning in terms of power delivery as usb c has more bandwidth to worth with (Power, video signal and charging at the same time).
 
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snipr125 said:
Yes I find that none of my external drives work with my iPad Air 3. Have not tried with powered usb hub yet. I guess it’s the limitation of lightning in terms of power delivery as usb c has more bandwidth to worth with (Power, video signal and charging at the same time).
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Yes, Lightning provides very minimal power output so you have to supply it externally. Moving from Lightning to USB-C was a major upgrade when I went from the 10.5 Pro to the 2018 12.9 Pro. The 12.9 can handle even spinning drives well.
 
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There is a way to make it work, but only some SSDs will work.
You need a USB 3.0 CCK and you should plug a power bank with a lightning cable into the lightening port of the CCK. Then you should use a low power SSD, like the Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD. Mind you, only up to 500GB. The 1TB version and up will take too much power and will only run on Ipad pros (except the 9.7, which works like any other basic ipads).
 
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Digitalguy said:
There is a way to make it work, but only some SSDs will work.
You need a USB 3.0 CCK and you should plug a power bank with a lightning cable into the lightening port of the CCK. Then you should use a low power SSD, like the Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD. Mind you, only up to 500GB. The 1TB version and up will take too much power and will only run on Ipad pros (except the 9.7, which works like any other basic ipads).
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I don't recall - is there a difference between what a Pro and non-Pro Lightning-based iPad can handle? I can connect a 4TB spinning drive to my 10.5 Pro with the camera connection kit with Lightning power supplied to the adapter.
 
sparksd said:
I don't recall - is there a difference between what a Pro and non-Pro Lightning-based iPad can handle? I can connect a 4TB spinning drive to my 10.5 Pro with the camera connection kit with Lightning power supplied to the adapter.
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Yes, lightning pro ipads have USB 3.0 and can handle any type of drive once power via lightning is connected. The only exception is the 9.7 pro, which works as a basic ipad. These devices (including all mini and air) can only handle some drives when power is connected, that is USB thumb drives of any kind, low power SSDs and no HDD... In this case the only way to connect the higher power drives is to use a powered hub (which is a much more clunky solution...)
 
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Digitalguy said:
Yes, lightning pro ipads have USB 3.0 and can handle any type of drive once power via lightning is connected. The only exception is the 9.7 pro, which works as a basic ipad. These devices (including all mini and air) can only handle some drives when power is connected, that is USB thumb drives of any kind, low power SSDs and no HDD... In this case the only way to connect the higher power drives is to use a powered hub (which is a much more clunky solution...)
Click to expand...

I am so happy to be using USB-C now. Now if Apple could only fix their problems with exFAT-formatted media ...
 
Will the iPad 9.7 inch Pro work with external hard drives then giving them enough power please?
 
max2 said:
Will the iPad 9.7 inch Pro work with external hard drives then giving them enough power please?
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it will work like a basic ipad, that is it will work only with low power drives when lightning is connected... The only way to make more power hungry drives work is to use a powered hub, in addition to lightning.... (which is something you cannot do easily on the go of course...)
 
So which iPads will power high powered portable drives ?
 
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