with the new iPads likely adopting usb-c, what do you think the likely hood of external usb-c hard drives. I really want to get an iPad Pro for editing photos while traveling. As many of you know, raw photos can take up a crap ton of room on storage. What I’m hoping is that I could get a lower storage model and pick up a Samsung usb drive that I could import my photos to and work from the drive. The recently announced photoshop makes me think this might be a possibility.
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External hard drive support
- Thread starter macdaddy1991
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I'm asking myself the same question, on top of huge loads of RAW photos, I need external hard drive to work on my videos as well. This USB-C thing makes me dream of being able to work with external HD with newer IpadPro and LumaFusion.
External drive support is probably one of the few things from almost completely giving up my MacBook
Got you!
But I dont see Apple giving up on their super pricey Internal storage capacity.
Third party tools allow you to plug in a Lightning flash drive and use their own app to manage this. No reason why Apple couldn't incorporate this into their Files app and allow you to manage external drives this way. It's not as convenient as true local storage but still a great option for taking additional content with you or backing data up and Apple already allow these apps on the app store so it's not like they are banning them from the app store.
Would be a great addition to iOS in all honesty but we would already be aware of it if true as it would show up in the current iOS 12 builds.
Would be a great addition to iOS in all honesty but we would already be aware of it if true as it would show up in the current iOS 12 builds.
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Would be amazing but I honestly don’t see it coming, at least not until iOS 13.
The lack of support for these type of accessories is more of a software limitation than hardware. Theoretically you could plug in sd cards/usb stick etc using the camera connection kit. On a jailbroken device, these could be used as external storage as well.
For this reason, I see it being announced at WWDC rather than at a hardware announcement. Of course - Apple could want to spin it as a new feature of the new iPads, I just think we’d have seen references to stuff like this in the code by now.
The lack of support for these type of accessories is more of a software limitation than hardware. Theoretically you could plug in sd cards/usb stick etc using the camera connection kit. On a jailbroken device, these could be used as external storage as well.
For this reason, I see it being announced at WWDC rather than at a hardware announcement. Of course - Apple could want to spin it as a new feature of the new iPads, I just think we’d have seen references to stuff like this in the code by now.
Would be very welcome if my Macbook 12'' Multiport hub worked with my iPad Pro! HDMI, multiple USB, ethernet and SDXC all in a single dock.
I would love to be able to plug in my 2TB Samsung T5 SSD to load my full resolution Lightroom catalog on my iPad Pro. Right now I only have smart previews stored locally and I don't want to shell out $20/mo to Adobe to slowly load these full resolution 42MP RAW files over the cloud. Local storage is always best for huge media files.
The biggest hurdle is if the iPad can support the power output for external drives, which are bus powered. This is why you can connect SD cards and thumb drives. But bigger drives use more power. Perhaps my SSD will ave a low enough power draw to be usable, but I doubt it. If they put an actual USB port on this thing then it should work with a wide variety of accessories.
The biggest hurdle is if the iPad can support the power output for external drives, which are bus powered. This is why you can connect SD cards and thumb drives. But bigger drives use more power. Perhaps my SSD will ave a low enough power draw to be usable, but I doubt it. If they put an actual USB port on this thing then it should work with a wide variety of accessories.
As with Apple, not always what is capable or what makes sense but what Apple will let you have.
Those are pricey for limited functionality/size.
There are similar options out there - wireless hard drives & memory sticks, wireless FileHubs supporting attached storage, Lightning-based card readers and memory sticks. I've tried all of them and they have various limitations, chief being that are not directly visible/accessible to other than dedicated accompanying applications (exception - file explorers can access FileHub storage). Some just don't work well at all. So you have to jump through multiple hoops to access the external storage, moving data multiple times. I find this to be a major shortcoming with iOS.
It does, as do other cloud services - except when you're in an area with poor or no Internet connectivity as I am frequently when I travel. Plus, transfer rates can be inefficient for moving large amounts of data in a timely manner (not to mention recurring fees for storage and Internet data transfers).
Most of my files are smaller Word and Excel files and I have DropBox mirror these on my device so I have a copy on my tablet, notebook and iPhone at all times. I can see where large raw files could be a problem for storage. When I take my DSLR out into the field I seldom come close to using more than I can store on SD cards. This memory is getting cheaper every day.
Yeah, short trips and day trips are no problem but I've spent weeks away from Internet connectivity and in those cases I've taken my laptop with additional storage. The iPad comes along as a consumption device but the laptop serves as the production platform. I also use a wireless FileHub supporting wireless connectivity to HDDs attached to it but the transfer speeds, while supporting video streaming, are simply too slow for moving any significant amounts of data. I've been experimenting with Lightning-based uSD card readers/writers but the problem there is having to do multiple file moves as only dedicated apps can access the readers - really inefficient and tedious.
This is fine but not for the use case that I’m mentioning. Cloud storage is not feasible for working on giant wedding shoots and the like.