iPad Pro Viewing Photos on External Hard Drive Painfully Slow

[purdnost]

I hooked up my portable hard drive (USB 3.0) to my M1 iPad Pro and it’s almost pointless to try and view any of the photos of videos I have stored on it. Sometimes I can open folders and view thumbnails and open some files, but most of the time I get ”Loading…” messages and the Files app locking up.

Is Apple still working out the bugs for this? Do I need something like a SSD?

 

[Shirasaki]

I seriously wonder if apple is even trying to do anything about that at this point. I simply stopped using iPadOS for external drive access after iPadOS 13. Not worth it.

 

[purdnost]

My iPad replaced my computer, so it’s now the only way I can access what’s on the drive. Didn’t want to have to invest in a NAS…

 

[Shirasaki]

My iPad replaced my computer, so it’s now the only way I can access what’s on the drive. Didn’t want to have to invest in a NAS…

iPad as of now is still not an ideal full replacement of a computer if you need external drive access. You would not even be able to backup/restore your external files with an iPad.

 

[sparksd]

I loaded a folder with 270 JPEG images, each from 5-12MB, onto my Samsung T7 SSD and connected it via USB-C to my 2021 12.9 Pro. Using Files, I opened the folder and all thumbnails showed up almost instantaneously and I was able to browse through each image in full res quite quickly. I used nPlayer to open a folder with 844 mp4 files (61GB) on the SSD and thumbnails for the videos were very quickly generated.

 

[rui no onna]

I loaded a folder with 270 JPEG images, each from 5-12MB, onto my Samsung T7 SSD and connected it via USB-C to my 2021 12.9 Pro. Using Files, I opened the folder and all thumbnails showed up almost instantaneously and I was able to browse through each image in full res quite quickly. I used nPlayer to open a folder with 844 mp4 files (61GB) on the SSD and thumbnails for the videos were very quickly generated.

In fairness, the Samsung T7 is way faster at small random reads compared to mechanical HDD.

 

[sparksd]

In fairness, the Samsung T7 is way faster at small random reads compared to mechanical HDD.

Right, as expected. The OP had asked about SSDs so I was providing this as comparison to what he was experiencing.

 

[Slartibart]

*assuming your on iPadOS 15* switch to FE Explorer or FileBrowser (Pro or Go). If you want maximal transfer speeds (still much slower on an iPad compared to any e.g. Macbook) via the USB-C connection get a Samsung T5, T7 or a Sandisk Extreme SSD and use that with your iPad. Amazon is offering some considerable discounts on these this week.