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USB for Data transfer (Word documents, etc)

I'm interested in an iPad Air (2019) and want to know if the photo transfer usb adaptor would work for file transfers to take a document for school from the computer lab on a flash drive and open it on the iPad Air

iPad Air 3 Wi-Fi

Posted on Dec 30, 2019 10:03 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 30, 2019 10:05 AM

Hello,


Yes, you can connect USB external storage devices into an iPad Air (3rd generation) with Apple’s Lightning to USB 3 Adapter.


iPadOS 13 supports the following disk formats with a GUID partition scheme:

  • macOS Extended journaled — YES Read and Write
  • APFS - YES Read and Write
  • FAT32 — NO
  • exFAT — NO
  • NTFS — NO


3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 30, 2019 10:05 AM in response to Sclagg

Hello,


Yes, you can connect USB external storage devices into an iPad Air (3rd generation) with Apple’s Lightning to USB 3 Adapter.


iPadOS 13 supports the following disk formats with a GUID partition scheme:

  • macOS Extended journaled — YES Read and Write
  • APFS - YES Read and Write
  • FAT32 — NO
  • exFAT — NO
  • NTFS — NO


Dec 30, 2019 10:20 AM in response to Sclagg

Welcome to the community.


Yes, you can use the Apple Lightning to USB3 Camera Adapter with your iPad to transfer files over a USB connection - the iPad will also require update to iPadOS13.x or later. The Apple USB3 Camera Adapter will allow you to simultaneously connect both your flash drive and an external charger to your iPad - as most external drives require more power than the iPad can provide.


Assuming that your computer lab uses PCs (or both PC and Mac), you must ensure that your flash drive is formatted using FAT, FAT32 or exFAT - with a single partition - as these are the only device formats that are universally portable between iPadOS, PC and Mac.


If you meet all these requirements, you should be okay 🙂.


I hope you find this helpful.

USB for Data transfer (Word documents, etc)

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