Anyone Having Success Getting A External HD To Work With IPad OS?
I have tried several different brands that I have on hand. When I connect directly to my 2017 iPad Pro, I get the error about device requires too much power. When I use a three way cable, which pulls power from a charger, then has a “split”, one for hd and one to lighting adaptor, I get a spinning hd, but nothing in the files app.
Also, I have tried several different brands of usb thumb drives. Most throw the error when plugged in directly. Weird thing though on theses, I have three of the exact same brand and storage size, ONE works great. The others throw the error.
I’ve only tried one external drive with my 2018 iPad Pro (a SanDisk Duo) and it worked fine.
I wonder if this might be related to using a Lightning-based iPad, rather than a USB-C one. I’ve got a lightning to USB adapter on order for use with my iPhone, so we’ll see how that does.
Good point ChrisUpchurch! Let me know if your new adapter works when it arrives. Surely there’s a way to get this to work for me! I have been very excited about this new feature.
All external hard drive mounted and are working properly on my iPad Pro 2018. Not sure if that’s an issue with a lightning-based iPad Pro as I don’t have any way to test it with a 2017 model.
My Lightning to USB adapter arrived. I’ve tested it with the my iPhone XS and iPad mini 4 (both running 13.1), with both the SanDisk Duo and a SanDisk Extreme USB 3.0 drive. In all cases, if I just plug in the drive, I get the error message saying the device requires too much power. However, if I plug a charging cable to the power pass through on the Lightning to USB adapter, I don’t get an error message and the drive shows up in the Files app.
So, my conclusion is that flash drives will work with Lightning based iOS devices, but you need an external power source and a USB adapter with power pass through.
You can also use a non-powered Lightning adapter, but then you need a powered USB hub to power the disks or USB-sticks. In this example a Garmin GPS and two USB-sticks are attached to an iPhone.
On a GPS forum this was a test someone did. I have both the powered and non-powered USB to Lightning adapters. With the non-powered adapter I can only attach SD cards and with the powered adapter my GPS, but also USB-sticks and a Samsung T5 SSD. I was not able to get spinning USB drives to work, maybe it is possible with a powered USB hub.
Thanks FrankV! I now have the proper set up on order. During my test with a three way cable, i was using the standard Apple power supply. According to the fruit folks, this was not enough, so i have ordered the more powerful power supply, cable, and the adapter.
Thanks for sharing. Now i know for sure that i am on the right path.
Yes, it depends on the power source and how much the attached device needs. With my Anker PowerPort+ USB charger it works fine, when I attach my GPS. I tried several power banks and I could get it only working with one that was able to deliver 2.1 A, another one was 1 A and that was not enough. I think the standard iPhone charger is 1 or 1.5 A, so that is not enough.
