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External hard drive and iPad...

How hard can it be? I've an external hard drive which contains legitimately purchased iTunes movies which I'd like to play on my iPad... sans laptop.


Why is this simply not possible? Despite the seemingly endless stream of software updates, the high initial purchase price, the wonderful customer support and the incredible marketing we still don't have access to what should be a basic function.


What gives? Should I throw in the Apple towel and buy something that actually does what you expect it to do?


Come on! This is 2018 and I'm getting old!!


Please tell me the solution.


Cheers... Paul

iPad Wi-Fi

Posted on Mar 12, 2018 12:14 PM

Reply
2 replies

Mar 12, 2018 2:57 PM in response to tinwelp

iDevices and iOS could never use standard, conventional external hard drives.

The power supplies in iDevices and iPads, specifically, are simply not powerful enough to handle these standard computer peripheral external storage devices.


There are a few special storage devices for mobile devices. There are portable, bulit-in WiFi hotspot hard drives for mobile devices made by Western Digital and Seagate.


http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1330


http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1660


http://www.seagate.com/consumer/stream/



There are special mobile lightning connected and built in WiFi Hot spot, USB flash drives made by SanDisk (now owned by Western Digital)


https://www.sandisk.com/home/mobile-device-storage/ixpand


https://www.sandisk.com/home/mobile-device-storage/connect-wireless-stick


http://www.adamelements.com/iKlips/iklips.html


This listing maybe incomplete and somewhat outdated, now. So do an online search for similar external data storage devices for iPads


Kingston Electronics makes some data storage devices for iPads/iDevices, now, too!


Besides, if these ARE purchased iTunes TV/movie content, you cannot stream/play these movies from any mobile external storage sources any longer, anyways.

The iTunes TV/Movie content will ONLY play if it is, physically stored on the iDevice.

So, you might as well just re-download your purchased iTunes content from the iTunes app on your iPad and gets stored in your TV App under either Library, TV Shows OR Movies.


You used to be able to stream iTunes purchased TV/Movie from mobile wireless storage drives, but Apple, rather secretly and covertly, coded this ability out of iOS sometime during the course of updates in iOS 8, four years, or so, ago.

This ability used to work in iOS 5 through iOS 7, but secretly disappeared after the introduction of iOS 8 with no warning or clue from Apple.


This is THE ONE HUGE reason I no longer purchase TV/Movies from Apple iTunes, any longer and have gone back to purchasing movies and TV Shows on physical, multi-format discs, now.


I can do what I want with these purchased discs and have been able to create versions I can put on my special mobile Wireless hard drives/flash drive and can NOW stream my purchased TV shows and movies once again from my remote storage drives without having to eat up my iPad physical storage with storing movies on it to play.

I have a a collection of my favorite movies saved on a 128 GBs SanDisk mobile rechargeable wireless, Wifi hot spot built-in flash drive that I can just put into a clothes pocket and stream my movie collection from it to my iPad using an iOS SanDisk app on my iPads.



My 1st generation, 2010 iPad 1, running iOS 5.1.1,can still stream all of my purchased iTunes movie/TV content from my Seagate Wireless hard drive, but this is the ONLY iPad that can.

Apple isn't going back through iOS 5-7 just to modify the code to code this remote external drive streaming out of these older iOS versions.


So, Good Luck to You!

Mar 12, 2018 3:19 PM in response to tinwelp

Just to add.


Try to remember.

No iPad is a true laptop replacement and it won’t be anytime soon, no matter what Apple states.

As long as laptop computers still exist and Apple is still designing, building and selling MacBooks/MacBook Airs/MacBook Pros, iPads will never be on equal footing, feature to feature, with these computers.

iPads will continue to be less powerful and less (or just different) feature rich mobile COMPANION devices.

iOS and iDevices will continue to evolve, but will take some time until Apple makes iOS nearly as powerful as the macOS and maybe by that time, Apple may discover a way to combine iOS/macOS into one common OS for all of Apple’ s future computing products.


Once, again, Good Luck to You!

External hard drive and iPad...

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