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iPad Pro iPads and external drives and torrents

DNichter said:
Portable how? The iPad is portable. You can access the NAS on your iPad from anywhere in the world.
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That assumes you have fast reliable internet wherever you might need it.
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jdaniel said:
Thanks for the replies guys..QNAP will not work for me I am looking for something portable. I travel alot and this remote thing is probably not a good idea...
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Personally, I use an inexpensive Windows laptop plus a couple of 4TB portable HDDs as my portable media and file storage server. Granted, I also have a 256GB iPad. All my must have data (and some entertainment to boot) fits on the iPad's internal storage. The laptop+HDDs are mostly just for additional entertainment (TV, movies, comics, etc) and for the occasional website that wouldn't play nice with the iPad.
 
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rui no onna said:
That assumes you have fast reliable internet wherever you might need it.

Not necessarily if you just want to download torrents. It pulls from your home internet connection, where the NAS resides. If you are referring to streaming movies, then yes you would need a good internet connection like you would to stream anything. Not too hard to come by.
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Check out the Amazon comments on WD My Wireless Pro, carefully. You could instead use a 128Gb lightning to usb flash drive for travel and leave the macbook at home for torrents. If the torrents are for corporate document downloads on the road, then you need a non IOS device. Note the Shield is ideal for travel and torrents and has 2 USB 3 ports.
 
Badrottie said:
Will Windows 10 run on Netbook?
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Got windows 10 on my hp stream 11.

It is one of the newer netbooks very cheap only 32gb "ssd" but it's got 1 USB 3 and 1 USB 2... easily enough for a downloading down with a couple of externals.

Chrome book would be good as well. Or an older real netbook.
 
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DNichter said:
To download torrents? No, you don't. You could do it from a 3G connection if you needed to. The NAS downloads the torrents through your home network.
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Nvm.. I thank you for taking the time to respond but I have no energy to debate a point LOL
 
You could get a QNAP NAS and a my passport wireless and have the nas back all of its files up onto the my passport which you can then take with you.
 
jdaniel said:
Why would I do that and not just get a my passport wireless on its own?
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Because the WD My Passport Wireless Pro wouldn't be able to do the torrents by itself.

And quite honestly, I have two of them and have had both crash badly enough to require a restore to factory settings a couple of times. I think Plex is too much for its wee processor and RAM unless you only have a small library. Infuse plus the built-in DLNA or SMB support is a more stable option.
 
That does not sound promising, does restoring to factory setting wipe the drive? or is it just a hard reset? I dont mind going a bit bigger than the WD mypassport wireless pro but I do not see anything out that remotely in that size range. I could go up to the size of a largish wireless router. the only thing i have seen thus far that is similarly portable is seperate from the hard drive and you have to connect a hard drive to it, I forget the brand. I dont mind going bigger than the WD but I have not found anything so far if anyone has PORTABLE suggestions as described above please post.


rui no onna said:
Because the WD My Passport Wireless Pro wouldn't be able to do the torrents by itself.

And quite honestly, I have two of them and have had both crash badly enough to require a restore to factory settings a couple of times. I think Plex is too much for its wee processor and RAM unless you only have a small library. Infuse plus the built-in DLNA or SMB support is a more stable option.
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jdaniel said:
That does not sound promising, does restoring to factory setting wipe the drive? or is it just a hard reset? I dont mind going a bit bigger than the WD mypassport wireless pro but I do not see anything out that remotely in that size range. I could go up to the size of a largish wireless router. the only thing i have seen thus far that is similarly portable is seperate from the hard drive and you have to connect a hard drive to it, I forget the brand. I dont mind going bigger than the WD but I have not found anything so far if anyone has PORTABLE suggestions as described above please post.
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He means to reformat the drive.

I'm telling you the WD Mypassport would make a poor choice. Buy it and see for yourself.

Meanwhile my 4-bay NAS is portable and is 5 yrs old. You get what you pay for.
 
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jdaniel said:
That does not sound promising, does restoring to factory setting wipe the drive? or is it just a hard reset? I dont mind going a bit bigger than the WD mypassport wireless pro but I do not see anything out that remotely in that size range. I could go up to the size of a largish wireless router. the only thing i have seen thus far that is similarly portable is seperate from the hard drive and you have to connect a hard drive to it, I forget the brand. I dont mind going bigger than the WD but I have not found anything so far if anyone has PORTABLE suggestions as described above please post.
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The Plex settings and database are stored in the main drive so I did the factory reset plus drive erase. Unfortunately, portability (battery + low power) plus low price point means cheap, relatively underpowered CPU and small RAM.

Personally, I still use a laptop for my portable Plex server for international travel. It's just more flexible and previous testing of WD My Passport Wireless Pro has shown it's not quite stable with Plex. The WD PWP does seem to work well as simple DLNA or Samba server with Infuse, though. Besides, there are still websites, etc. that don't play nice with the iPad so I find it useful to have a laptop for those occasions.

Mind, you haven't actually defined what you meant by portable. Technically, at around 5 lbs with dual HDDs, I can carry something like this in my luggage:

Qnap 2-Bay, 8TB(2x4TB NAS Drive) Intel 2.0GHz Quad-Core CPU (TS-251+-8G-24R-US)

When I purchased the WD PWP, my use case was in car entertainment for relatively short trips (didn't really need the laptop for those) with an eye towards replacing the laptop for longer travel. Alas, due to recent health issues, haven't really gone on a lot of road trips of late. Initial observations? Aside, from Plex being unstable, the WD PWP is also particularly sensitive to potholes. :p

bufffilm said:
He means to reformat the drive.

I'm telling you the WD Mypassport would make a poor choice. Buy it and see for yourself.

Meanwhile my 4-bay NAS is portable and is 5 yrs old. You get what you pay for.
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Again, please note that the WD My Passport Wireless Pro is not just a simple external HDD. It has a Realtek RTD1195 Dual Cortex-A7 SoC and 512MB RAM and is a self-contained mini-computer running Linux in its own right. It's actually faster than some older NAS before NAS became synonymous with media servers. When I said factory reset, I did mean factory reset. It's not just a simple drive reformat via Windows. :rolleyes:

That said, yes, the WD PWP is a pretty poor choice as Plex server.
 
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MRxROBOT said:
Of course you do and I don't remember the OP stating they had an unlimited 3G connection or 3G available at all.
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I am not sure, I guess I just assumed when talking about downloading torrents, that he would have internet to do so. My apologies. I am not sure of any ways to download torrents without any internet connection.
 
DNichter said:
I am not sure, I guess I just assumed when talking about downloading torrents, that he would have internet to do so. My apologies. I am not sure of any ways to download torrents without any internet connection.
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My understanding is that the OP wants a way to download torrents without the use of a PC or Mac. They then want access to said torrents without relying on an Internet connection.
 
MRxROBOT said:
My understanding is that the OP wants a way to download torrents without the use of a PC or Mac. They then want access to said torrents without relying on an Internet connection.
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Okay, I understand now. Using the QNAP 251+ as the NAS / Plex Server to download torrents, set up a Plex server on the NAS, and then download individual torrent files (if movies or shows) using a Plex Pass account for on the go without an internet connection. This would work pretty well.
 
DNichter said:
Okay, I understand now. Using the QNAP 251+ as the NAS / Plex Server to download torrents, set up a Plex server on the NAS, and then download individual torrent files (if movies or shows) using a Plex Pass account for on the go without an internet connection. This would work pretty well.
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That depends on one's use-case.

The reason I bring a laptop as Plex server during long vacations is so that I can carry terabytes of entertainment with me. I won't be able to consume all of it but it would give a me a large enough selection to choose from (my own mini-Netflix and Spotify) in case I ever find myself stuck in my hotel room due to inclement weather or sickness (had a flu for like half a month of my vacation once).
 
rui no onna said:
That depends on one's use-case.

The reason I bring a laptop as Plex server during long vacations is so that I can carry terabytes of entertainment with me. I won't be able to consume all of it but it would give a me a large enough selection to choose from (my own mini-Netflix and Spotify) in case I ever find myself stuck in my hotel room due to inclement weather or sickness (had a flu for like half a month of my vacation once).
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I usually take my laptop along too and have a 4TB My Passport loaded with videos but if I do want to go really light then I take just the Air 2, the My Passport, and a RAVPower FileHub to stream the video to my Air 2.
 
If you want portable, have you considered a Raspberry Pi? Tiny, cheap, can run on a USB battery pack or off a wall wart, easy to convert to a torrent box, some include wifi etc. Saves torrents to your external drive, then you can access from the iPad.

Plus you get infinite geek cred.
 
RedTomato said:
If you want portable, have you considered a Raspberry Pi? Tiny, cheap, can run on a USB battery pack or off a wall wart, easy to convert to a torrent box, some include wifi etc. Saves torrents to your external drive, then you can access from the iPad.
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Lol, I was planning on doing this before the WD My Passport Wireless Pro was released. I still have parts for an RPi 2 Model B build. :p Alas, no time to tinker. :(
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sparksd said:
I usually take my laptop along too and have a 4TB My Passport loaded with videos but if I do want to go really light then I take just the Air 2, the My Passport, and a RAVPower FileHub to stream the video to my Air 2.
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Now that Infuse has metadata support I think I might try the RAVPower FileHub Plus. :)
 
rui no onna said:
Lol, I was planning on doing this before the WD My Passport Wireless Pro was released. I still have parts for an RPi 2 Model B build. :p Alas, no time to tinker. :(
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Now that Infuse has metadata support I think I might try the RAVPower FileHub Plus. :)
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The RAVPower's Ethernet capability has saved me on a couple of trips - in one case, the place I stayed had wired-only Internet access and I use it to create a local wireless network; in a couple of other instances, the provided wireless signal was poor but a good wired connection was available so again I created my own local network. Nice thing is that it can be shared by multiple devices so it's a better solution than an Ethernet dongle. Wireless access can really be dodgy in a lot of areas outside of cities.
 
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