External storage for 10.5 iPad pro
What’s the best Device to store all of my photos externally from my iPad 10.5 pro ?
iPad Pro, iPadOS 14
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Best is subjective - however, perhaps the least problematic are regular USB storage devices. For your iPad Pro 10.5, for greatest transfer speed, choose a storage device that has a USB 3.0 or later interface - and ensure that you are using Apple’s Lightning to USB3 Camera Adapter:
- Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter
https://store.apple.com/uk/xc/product/MK0W2ZM/A
USB 2.0 drives are usable, but offer transfer speeds technically limited to 480Mbps - whereas USB 3.0 offers a maximum throughput of 4Gbps.
In addition to a USB port and essential USB Host Controller, this adapter incorporates a pass-through Lightning port to which you should connect your Power Adapter (rated at least 12W - and preferably greater) - as your iPad alone is unable to source sufficient power for the majority of external storage devices.
To be recognised by iPadOS, the attached USB storage device must be formatted to FAT, FAT32, exFAT, APFS or HFS+ with a single partition. The FAT formats are universal - allowing your storage device to be accessed by the majority of modern computers; APFs and HFS+ are Apple proprietary, limiting use to iOS/iPadOS and macOS. Microsoft proprietary formats, such as NTFS are not supported by iPad.
If choosing an SSD drive, the fastest and most expensive are not necessarily the most compatible. Avoid the Samsung T7 series as these are known to be problematic with iPad - whereas many contributors here report the cheaper T5 to be more stable. Other SSDs are available. Traditional HDD can be used, however, these are usually slower and have much higher power needs - at least during spin-up.
