I’m after an external HDD of at least 500gb, preferably more like 1tb size that will talk with an iPad by wifi. Any such product exist? Seems a far better way to access films, videos etc. are there varying standards for transfer speeds, fast enough to stream films to the iPad would be good.

Cheers

Western Digital my book live 2tb was my solution to this conundrum. It just works which is what I wanted. Allows me to access it when I’m in hotel rooms a gazillion miles away to watch whatever I want from my hard drive at home. Also wirelessly backs up the MacBooks.

Not as big as you have requested but I have just bought a 64 GB Sandisk Media drive and am very pleased with it.

http://www.sandisk.co.uk/products/wireless/media-drive/

It has quality apps for iPad and android, is pretty small and has a slot for SD cards so good for looking at pictures from a camera.

Wireless streaming works really well – I had three devices simultaneously watching video from it and it worked fine.

bigG, how do you access a hard drive at home from a remote location? is it essentially a network drive you can log into? I take it you need a decent connection for that?

Ideally I need a solution that works with no internet connection as some of the places I work struggle for phone signal, let along data or wifi.

Cletus I like the look of that, just need more space. The card slots are a very nice feature

Andy, the WD drive has an app that allows you to access media on it remotely. As I stay away in hotels 3/4 nights a week on average it’s great to be able to watch movies, box sets etc. I find it works really well on wifi (and unlike sky, iplayer etc it doesn’t get confused by hotel wifi that thinks it’s in France, Belgium etc). On 3G on the ipad it works ok but it eats bucket loads of data if watching a movie. It doesn’t struggle with three devices steaming different stuff at the same time.

They also have a dedicated photo app that I can use to take pics and they auto upload to the hard drive, or use to view them. We use it to turn an ipad into a digital photo frame sometimes.

I can’t remember how much I paid but it wasn’t expensive, which is why I bought a 2TB drive to give me a bit of future proofing.

It sits next to the wifi router at home, but can sit anywhere with a power socket, and acts as a wireless network drive you’re right.

That sounds handy. Is it too big to carry around to use as a remote drive if no internet will be available or is it quite portable?

It’s a pretty substantial bit of kit (think wifi router sized) so I’d not say it’s really portable. I have a portable 1tb hard drive that I take away with me if I think I’ll struggle with a wifi connection, but since I tend to stay in Marriott hotels I very rarely struggle ( and I love their rewards scheme)

this might fit the bill..comes with a media streaming app for ios and you can connect more that one client too

http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/external-hard-drives/portable-hard-drives/wireless/wireless-plus/

4tb is only £169 or so…

looks a nice bit of kit 🙂

I believe Lacie do one called the Fuel, which is designed to stream content to iOS devices. Not sure whether it or the seagate is better

That or the Seagate are on my list to purchase for hols this year. Might solve a neat problem for keeping a 3 y/o amused when driving from Lancashire to southern France.