IPad – How do external storage devices work with the iPad

ipad

The Apple iPad is a sexy little device, but I have no clues on how the OS on that thingy works, and since it does not come with a USB connection I'm having some problems with how data is moved around on that thingy.

  1. Apple sells a USB converter that you can plug into the iPad so you can connect it with a camera. But could I do the same with a portable drive like Western Digital Passport? Can I move images back and forth between the IPad and the Passport?

  2. Can I connect the iPad to a NAS and do the same: move images/stuff back and forth between the NAS and the iPad …

Two topical scenarios would be:

  • Take a image from my canon camera, fix red eyes on the iPad and then store the image on a usb/mass storage device.

  • copy over the latest episode of my favourite show from the NAS, watch it on the IPad and then delete the copy. In some cases also be able to transfer files over the the NAS

Is this possible? Someone has told me the iPad is only a "viewer", and I understand it is not a creational device… the the simple scenarios described are my minimum spec

Best Answer

You'd need a computer to do those things.

I.e. you're be able to load the image directly from the camera, and edit them in an appropriate app, but then cannot move the image to the external drive (at least not with another app that allows you to do that). You can transfer the image back to your computer using iTunes, or share it e.g. using Dropbox and access it from there.

Regarding NAS access -- this might be possible (again) using an app that connects to the NAS and allows you to browse and open files there. The iOS itself doesn't expose any file system to the user, be it internal or external.

You'd need to use iTunes Home Sharing to do this without any additional software, requiring the NAS files being added to iTunes and your computer to be running.

What's possible on iPad (and any iOS device) is rather closely tied to the applications available for it. The system itself doesn't expose a lot of "power-user" features like (gasp) file system access to the user.

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