by I love my iPad, but I made the mistake of buying a 16GB model—that’s not enough storage for all my apps, home videos, movies, TV shows, photos, and documents. I can rely on cloud storage, but since my iPad is Wi-Fi only, I like having extra local storage. I’ve been using a Kensington Wi-Drive, but it has its limitations.
I recently replaced the Wi-Drive with Seagate’s $200 Wireless Plus, a Wi-Fi equipped portable hard drive that offers 1TB of storage. It has a few limitations of its own, but it’s a nice storage device with good iOS apps and useful features.
Internet Access: Connect the Wireless Plus to Wi-Fi Internet so you can maintain an Internet connection while using the drive.
Using the Wireless Plus with an iOS device requires the free Seagate Media app for iPad or iPhone. (An Android app is also available.) The app provides quick and easy access to the drive’s files, with both a Thumbnail and a List View that I use frequently, and Genre and Year views that I almost never use but find helpful at times.
A computer or mobile device can connect to only one Wi-Fi signal at a time. That means the device can’t connect directly to Wi-Fi Internet when connected to the Wireless Plus. Fortunately, the Seagate Media app allows the Wireless Plus to connect to Wi-Fi Internet, giving your computer or mobile device Internet access. When connecting to a public Wi-Fi hotspot that requires authentication, the app will ask for authentication and then switch over to Safari, where you enter a username and password. The performance hit is slightly noticeable but not frustratingly so, with webpages taking a short pause before loading.
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