One of the changes coming with iPadOS and iOS 13 is the ability to connect an external hard drive to your iPhone or iPad. This offers a particularly big productivity boost for iPad Pro users hoping to fully replace a computer with their sleek tablet.
Of course, you may need an adapter to connect an external drive to your device (that’s just the world we live in these days), but once you do you can read or write data using the Files app.
It’s surprisingly easy to access data on your external storage with the new software and it offers a wealth of possibilities: create backups, transfer data, or view content directly from the drive. There’s no need to copy files to your device!
Learn everything there is to know about using external hard drives with iPadOS and iOS 13 below.
Quick TipsFollow these quick tips if your external hard drive is not working with your iPad or iPhone on iPadOS or iOS 13+:
Make sure both your device and your external drive are connected to a power source other than the iPad/iPhone/iPod–this is the single most important factor to get this working! If using a hub, make sure that has its own power source too!
Ensure your external hard drive is in the correct format (exFAT, HFS, FAT32, or APFS)
Users report the most success using APFS or HFS
Use an adapter that lets you plug your iPhone or iPad into power at the same time–like the Apple lightning camera adapter
Inspect your external hard drive, cables, and ports for signs of physical damage
Update the software on your iPhone or iPad to the latest version available
Shut down your iPhone, iPad, or iPod then connect the external drive and restart it
Try connecting your drive to a self-powered hub and then connect that hub to the Lightning to USB adapter
Connecting an external hard drive to your iPhone or iPad
Use an adapter to connect your external drive to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod
Connecting an external hard drive to your iPadOS or iOS 13 devices is as simple as plugging it into the port on the bottom. Of course, that’s only simple if your external storage matches the connector type.
The latest generation of iPad Pro features a USB-C charging port, allowing you to connect any USB-C accessory with ease. But those of us without the new iPad Pro or without USB-C hard drives need to use adapters to connect our storage.
The Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter lets you plug in a lightning cable at the same time. Image from Apple.
However, most people probably want to connect an external drive using a USB connector. For this, you need a Lightning to USB Adapter. We recommend the USB 3 adapter that lets you supply power at the same time.
Seeing “cannot use accessory: requires too much power?”
Quite a few readers discovered that their drives were not working with any third-party camera adapters, mainly because those third-party products were not providing power to their drives.
Switching to the Apple-branded camera adapter solved the problem as it provides power to a connected device!
What adapters or hubs do I need?
Apple has a lot of different adapters on offer these days.
The specific adapter you need to connect an external hard drive to your iPhone or iPad depends on your specific drive and your specific device.
Look at the connector on the bottom of your iPhone or iPad, it should either be a Lightning port or a USB-C port. Older Apple devices used a 30-pin connector, but those are mostly gone these days.
Now, look at the connector for your external drive. Is it an SD Card? A USB cable? A USB-C or Thunderbolt connector?
Whatever it is, you usually need an adapter to connect it to your iPhone or iPad. We recommend choosing an adapter that also lets you supply power if possible. That way your device won’t run out of battery and your external drive is more likely to work.
You only need a USB hub if you’re planning to connect multiple accessories to your device at once. This is entirely possible — some users have connected three or more external drives at the same time — but we recommend you find a powered hub to do so.
Which external drives are compatible?
You should be able to use any external storage devices with your iPhone or iPad. Image from Pixabay.
Apple hasn’t released any compatibility information regarding external hard drives for iPadOS and iOS 13. Regardless of the brand or style of your drive, there’s a good chance it works with your iPhone and iPad.
Theoretically, you can connect anything from an SD Card to a thumb drive, to an SSD to your Apple device without any problems. But you need to ensure your hard drive gets the power it needs and is in the right format.
Powered versus non-powered external drives
All external drives need the power to work. But larger external drives need so much power they can’t draw it through cable from your device and you need to connect them to mains power instead.
When you plug your hard drive in, it tells your iPhone or iPad how much power it needs. If your device can’t deliver that much power, an alert appears onscreen and the drive doesn’t work.
Any formats created with Disk Utility work in iPadOS or iOS 13.
Think the format for your external storage as the language it’s written in. If your iPhone or iPad can’t speak that language the drive won’t work. You can change the format of a drive using a Mac or Windows PC, but doing so usually erases everything on it.
The last two options work with Windows and macOS. So you could use the same hard drive for your PC, Mac, iPhone, and iPad! iPadOS and iOS 13 also recognize partitions in your storage, seeing each partition as an individual drive.
One problem is that iPadOS and iOS 13 can’t access encrypted drives. No option appears to unlock encrypted drives on your iPhone or iPad, so you’re unable to access the contents. Hopefully, that changes with future updates.
Can I reformat my drive using an iPad or iPhone?
If your external drive is written in an incompatible format, you need to use it to a Mac or PC to change it. Sadly, there are still some things you need to use a computer for.
Even with iPadOS, the iPad can’t take over everything yet!
Can I access the contents of my computer by connecting it?
Connect accessories that have built-in storage to view their contents with your iPhone or iPad. Things such as dictaphones or cameras work great. But you can’t view the contents of a computer by connecting your devices.
Of course, most of us are happy enough using the computer itself to view its contents. And you can still transfer data to your iPhone or iPad using iTunes or Finder, just like you always could.
How do I eject an external drive from my iPhone or iPad?
Your external drive is truly a plug-and-play device with iPadOS and iOS13+
You may have noticed there’s no eject button for external hard drives in the Files app. Unlike the on a computer, you don’t get a nasty error notification should you disconnect a drive unexpectedly. In fact, that’s how you’re expected to do it!
So long as you aren’t in the middle of copying, pasting, or creating new files on an external drive, you can simply unplug the cable when you’re finished using it.
Why couldn’t it always be so simple?
If you are super concerned, you can always shut down your iDevice and then manually remove the external drive.
Using an external drive on your iPhone or iPad
It’s easy to do a lot of different things in the new Files app.
After you connect an external drive to your iPhone or iPad, you can view its contents using the Files app. This app is the best way to manage files on your device, in your cloud storage services, and now on your external hard drives.
iPadOS and iOS 13 give you read and write privileges on external hard drives. That means it’s possible to create and edit files on your drive instead of only being able to view what’s already there. You can even write to external drives using third-party apps.
How do I find my external drive in the Files app?
Open the Files app on your iPhone or iPad and tap Locations to see your external drive. If you don’t see a Locations button, keep tapping Browse at the bottom-right of the screen to go back.
From the Locations page, you should see your external drive listed alongside other storage options. Tap it to view and edit the contents.
Do I need third-party apps to open my external drive’s files?
You don’t need a third-party app to access the contents on your external drive, you can use the built-in Files app instead. That said, you can use a third-party file-management app, such as Documents by Readdle, if you prefer.
Can I view pictures, listen to music, and watch movies on my external drive?
Access all kinds of media within the Files app itself.
You can open a wide range of documents within the Files app. That means you don’t need to copy content from your external storage to your iPhone or iPad to open it. Play videos, listen to music and view pictures using the built-in media player in Files.
You can even open and mark up PDF documents.
But there are still some specialist formats, like.psd Photoshop files, that still need third-party apps to work. For these formats, you typically need to move them to your device and open them in a specific app.
How do I save photos, music, and movies to my device?
Transfer content from your external drive to your device to make it available even when your drive isn’t plugged in. There are two ways to do this:
Move files to On My [iDevice].
Save content to Photos from the Share Sheet.
Save Images or Videos to the Photos app from the Share Sheet.
Tap Select and then use the Folder icon to move files or folders to your device within the Files app. You can add them to specific folders, or simply move them to On My iPhone or On My iPad.
Alternatively, select the photo or video you want to save and tap the Share button. From the share sheet, choose Save Image or Save Video. You can find the saved content in the Photos app on your device.
How do I move content from one external drive to another?
Improved split-screen in iPadOS makes it easy to drag-and-drop files to where you want them.
With iPadOS and iOS 13, you can transfer content from one external storage system to another without saving anything to your device.
To do so, you normally need a multi-port adapter or a USB hub that allows you to connect multiple hard drives to your device at once. Then use the Move function in Files to move content from one drive straight to another.
To move content using Files, tap Select and choose whichever files or folders you want to move. Tap the folder icon, then choose the destination you want to move the files to. You can use this same process for uploading files to a cloud storage service.
Can I free up storage by saving content to an external drive?
Move files and folders to an external drive if your storage is almost full.
The ability to access external drives from your iPhone or iPad is a lifesaver for those of us running low on storage. Simply connect an external drive to your device and copy your larger files or folders to it. Then delete those files from your iPhone or iPad.
Of course, data saved to your external drive isn’t accessible without connecting the drive. But it’s a great place to store rarely used files and folders that you’re unlikely to need soon.
You could even use the same method to move content from a cloud storage service to an external drive. Of course, you need to wait for it to download first. But once it’s done, you could delete that content from the cloud to free up even more storage.
And it’s easy to bring content back to your device at a later date. Just plug your external hard drive in again.
Important note:
As always, if there is irreplaceable content on your external storage, make sure you back it up elsewhere. External drives are easy to lose and can fail just as easily as anything else. There’s a great saying for the digital age to help remember this:
Two is one, and one is none.
What to do if your external hard drive is not working for iPadOS and iOS 13
iPadOS and iOS 13 are still in the early stage, along with macOS Catalina and TVOS 13. Image from Apple.
Hopefully, you can connect and use your external drive without any problems. However, since iPadOS and iOS 13 are new, that may not be the case for a lot of users.
Apple should resolve most issues by the time iPadOS and iOS 13 are publicly released in fall. But in the meantime, check out our troubleshooting tips below if your external hard drive isn’t working in iPadOS or iOS 13.
This accessory requires too much power
The most common issue when an external drive is not working in iPadOS or iOS 13 is an alert that appears saying: This accessory requires too much power.
When you see a message about an external drive requiring too much power, use an adapter that provides additional power to the drive
This happens when your external drive doesn’t receive enough power to work properly. You can normally fix it by supplying more power to the drive or to the Apple device.
We suggest using an adapter with a separate charging port for your device, like the Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter. Also, make sure you power your device from a mains supply, not from the USB port on a computer.
Some hard drives need a power supply to work.
If your external drive requires mains power, make you’ve plugged in and switched it on.
If that doesn’t work, some users fixed it by connecting a USB hub to their iPhone or iPad, then connecting the external drive to that hub. This seems to bypass any software limits written into the drive itself.
Some content is unavailable
A partitioned drive may make some content unavailable.
Other users received an error message warning that content on their external drive was unavailable. The most common cause of this error is when your external hard drive is written in an incompatible format that doesn’t work in iPadOS and iOS 13.
You need to use a Mac or PC to reformat the drive to a compatible format. When you do this it usually erases all the content, so make a backup first.
You may also receive this error message if your external hard drive has a partition in an incompatible format. If this is the case, you can ignore the message and still use whichever partitions are still readable.
This accessory is not supported
Some users found their Glyph hard drive doesn’t work with iPadOS and iOS 13. Image from Sweetwater.
Some external drives still aren’t supported. It’s unclear why these drives aren’t working with iPadOS or iOS 13 since Apple hasn’t released any information about drive compatibility. This error message might also appear when your external drive is faulty or damaged.
If your external drive is in the right format, it’s worth checking it for physical damage. Inspect the ports, cables, and enclosure for signs of anything that might cause problems.
Old-fashioned spinning drives easily break if they get dropped and pretty much all hard drives break when they get wet.
Also, be careful not to confuse Thunderbolt and USB-C connectors. Despite looking the same, they are subtly different. Make sure you use the correct adapter for your device and accessories, without mixing Thunderbolt and USB-C together.
This helpful table from Akitio explains some of the differences between USB-C and Thunderbolt.
Let us know your experience in the comments below. Is your external drive working on iPadOS or iOS 13 or not? What do you plan to use it for? Or have you experienced other problems? We’ll do our best to keep this post up to date and get you the help you need!
Reader tips
For my 1st gen iPad Pro. The solution was two-fold
Use Apple’s lightning-to-dual port lightning adapter with one port connected to AC power (this provides power to the iPad)
For the 2nd port on Apple’s adapter, I connected a cable from my USB travel hub. That hub was also connected separately to power. Then I connected my external drive to the hub. Now it’s all working!
Although Apple says that exFAT and FAT32 drives are compatible, no one I know has ever gotten it to work. From my experiences, the only reliable formats for your external drives and iPadOS / iOS 13+ are macOS Extended journaled ANDAPFS. Both allow me to Read and Write without issue. Hopefully, Apple fixes this compatibility issue in the future
Dr 3 recommends using a powered hub and connected your devices to that hub, then the hub to the iPad/iPhone. Worked with his iPhone 11 Max, iPad 8th Gen, and iPad Pro
Try naming the home folder on your portable drive DCIM, then create a subfolder to 100APPLE. This is the trick that finally worked for me and got my iPad to see my external hard drive
I found it only worked connecting my thumb drive using a hub as an intermediary between the iPad and the drive. It did not work when I connected it directly using my lightning to USB adapter–this is how I set it up: iPad > Apple Lightning to USB camera adapter > USB Hub > external flash drive
Dan writes tutorials and troubleshooting guides to help people make the most of their technology. Before becoming a writer, he earned a BSc in Sound Technology, supervised repairs at an Apple Store, and even taught English in China.
I’ve now learned I should have stayed with Android instead of this Apple junk. Brand new ipad does not recognize external drives, or mouse and keyboard at times. Never had this issue with android stuff. I have owned Samsung products for years – phone, tablet, etc. and never crap like this. After reading this article, which basically is a good article, but is smoke because it doesn’t contain any real information for actual fixes, try this , try that, and finally hopefully Apple will make the changes. Sad fact that Apple puts this junk out after all these years of computing – they know their stuff isn’t compatible with android or windows features. So what makes them better? Nothing !
Dear Dann, Thanks for all your info. I need an advice to find out if I need an extra adapter , I want to download pics and data directly from I-Phone 13 Pro-max. I ‘m out of data, don’t care for i-cloud extra fees.
I got The Lightning to USB 3 Camera adapter for iPhone. . It didn’t work with a SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 Flash Drive, 512 GB. ccessory not supported, Requieres too much power…I didn’t notice that it works with windows and Mac. I don’t have a Mac. I didn’t understand the re-format process either. I don’t have a Hub yet . How ever, I’m not sure which one is best and cheaper, apple compatible… a what adapter do I need for a lightning to USB-C camera adapter for my IPad Pro… do I need one for each I-Phone 13 Pro-max and IPad Pro 5th ? In the other hand , I got a SanDisk Professional G-DIVE ArmorADT, 1TB but when I tried to conecte to iPad, same issue, accessory needs to be powered. It does not fit the one for iPhone… So got wron stuff.. or its complicated all that reformat thing. What do you suggest will solve issues ? Thanks for your kind advice.
I just got an external drive for my ipad and it disconnected while something was being moved to it, now it will not show up under files and I have no idea how to fix that. This article didn’t help :/
Had the same issue, let me know if you resolved your side of technical problems, I’d like to learn from another person who’s experiencing the same inconvenience and perhaps someone else’s solution may fix mine.
My iPad Air 4 has ios15 but is unable to recognise the crucial 2t portable ssd when connected. It was able to connect initially but after a dialog problem which I don’t understand the ssd is not recognised. Any suggestions would be helpful.
I hope I can explain my situation properly so I can get assistance. I don’t know how to allow my iPad to get full editing access to my hard drive. For example, I cannot delete files, because my iPad says “read only” with an icon that looks like a cross through a pencil. How do I allow my iPad access to edit my files on my hard drive?
SDD with proper connection stopped reading when all files were stored directly under it without any folder wher they were before stored when it worked! Is there a limitation on number of files or naming or extensions used? farmated in EXFAT SSD Samsung about 500GB on last IPAd with lightening! USB otherwise worgs wit sticks! Soe CLUE what to do?
Devices + iPadOS
– iPad Pro 2018
– iPadOS 14.3
– Two identical Hard drives powered.
– File-hub also powered and switchable between 7 connections
– File-hub wired to iPad Pro
The two hard drives were used as a RAID when using a Mac, now I wanted to use them as RAID connected to my iPad Pro to find out if that would work or not. So both connected via file-hub and later also separately.
Result: iPad Pro can not see these two hard drives a a RAID. Was to be expected.
But the beauty was that the iPad Pro mounted them separately fine. One time and one time only they even mounted both. One designated by the name of the RAID the other as Untitled. Interesting.
However most of that time only one drive could be seen and when mounting one drive alone at the time it just went fine. Didn’t matter which of the two drives in that case, it mounted with the RAID name.
So basically I had no use anymore for the RAID setup as I work exclusively on the iPad Pro. Therefore I reformatted the drives separately with macOS Extended ( Journaled) on the old, very old, bit still working iBook. Seemed like a good idea. Snifs
Result: iPad Pro does not see them at all anymore drives are not mounting. Bummer. Tried out with only one drive at the time an no other devices attached to the file hub. Both attached at the same time also no nothing at all, well that figured.
Totally flabbergasted
My level of expertise ends here. Help!!
Many thanks in advance. Edmond
I have an iPad pro 9.7 and i bought the lightening to usb camera adapter too. When i tried any thumb drive is working like a charm but the external hard drive doesn’t. It showed up on the file and disappears immediately. in both cases i have power connected on the adapter and the filesystem is HFS+.
Nice article. I have a WD Passport Portable SSD 1TB and using it with my iPad it’s like playing lottery, sometimes I’m lucky and works really well, and sometimes the hd it’s not on the list and I can’t use it. Looks like the iPad didn’t recognize it, but he did the day before. Why this happened and how could I fix it. Thanks in advance.
Hi i have an i pad air and i want to transfer data from that to my seagat hard drive i have got the apple camera adapter and a wired hub plugged it all in but nothing on i pad in files app can you help i have reformatted it but still nothing the hub is AUKRU with4 usb ports
thanks
Hi, I cannot connect WD My Passport SSD to my iPhone 11 pro iOS13, even though I use an Apple dongle USB Camera and lightning connector. I looked for software updates on WD website for the SSD but did not find any. The My Passport SSD does connect to iPad pro iOS13 though, and to my PC. It says it is formatted as exFAT.
Any suggestion to enable that connection?
Thank you.
This sounds like a power issue since it works with your iPad Pro but not with your iPhone. What’s worked for others in similar situations is connecting the drive to a self-powered hub and then connecting that hub to the dongle.
Great article! One question I have about my iPad Pro.
I have an external hard drive that works great to store my drone footage, BUT I cannot figure out how to see how much storage is used on my 2TB external drive.
When it’s connected I can get information about the drive and content but NOT how much space is used.
Any suggestions would be gratefully appreciated!
Coming from Windows it was an easy thing to do. Thank you!
I want to save my files on an external hard drive (mostly lots of family photos), I am going to buy an iPad air 3 as soon as they come back into stock this month and want to be able to transfer from the external hard drive to make photo books and edit photos if need be.
I bought a Seagate external hard drive today.
From the comments below am I right in understanding that this external hard drive won’t work with the iPad air 3?
Could you please guide me in what would work, please?
A Windows external drive will work with iPadOS if it’s formatted as exFAT. So you made need to reformat the hard drive using your Windows 10 computer to ensure it’s exFAT.
We suggest once you reformat the drive, run a test with the iPad to ensure the drive is recognized in the Files app before moving large amounts of photos onto it. Try adding just a few photos, along with a folder containing 5-10 photos. See if the iPad sees the drive and the files & folders.
If it does, then you are good to go to move larger amounts using the HD on both your computer and your iPad.
I have an extra SSD drive and I tried to connect to my iPad Pro 11 (2020), and it doesn’t connect.
I’ve tried every possible cable connections in order to connect and it doesn’t work too, but when I tried to connect my micro sd card (32gb) it easily gets connected to the device (Ipad).
I don’t have a Mac computer to connect to, and can’t find some answers/experiments.
So I tried to find out the format of my micro sd card which is formatted to Fat32.
Now I then connect my SSD drive 1tb to my laptop and try to format the same with my sd card, the problem is there is no option to format to Fat32 instead ExFat format is available to choose, because of it I continued to format my 1tb SSD card to Exfat.
After a successful format to ExFat, I tried again to connect my 1tb SSD ExFat formatted to my Ipad, and yes! it works.
Now, I can use my SSD drive 1tb both in Windows and IOS 13 Ipad Pro (2020).
Then I found this Article regarding which formats would be compatible for SSD drive for Ipad OS 13.
I recently purchased an Samsung T5 to use with my iPad Pro 9.7 and have successfully to transfer many photos to do free up space on the iPad.
The problem is I don’t know how to view remaining storage capacity on the SSD, l’m also unable to install the setup software supplied on the SSD and just get a response the file is empty.
I’ve downloaded software from Samsung which was a zip file and with the response is as before .
Do I need that software to view the remaining capacity of the SSD?
My iPad is up to date with 13.4. I am a 72 year old newbie so please be gentle.
You have discovered one of the biggest shortcomings with iPadOS/iOS external drive integration. You cannot at this time get a quick snapshot of your external drive’s stats, including storage available, used, and remaining.
It’s very frustrating.
Some readers recommend a third-party app called System Status Pro (runs about $4) that provides information on storage–we have not had an opportunity to test and verify that this app does recognize external drives. As an FYI, a few of our readers tell us that it does. But again, we have not confirmed that.
What most folks do is connect that same drive to a Mac to get more detailed information about the external drive.
The software from Samsung is for a computer, not an iPad and that’s why it won’t work.
The T5 is a great external drive for your iPad–you are using the right stuff. It’s just too bad that Apple neglected to include such basic drive information–hopefully, iOS 14 corrects that mistake.
From Mac Rumors web site “Apple is said to be focusing on performance and quality in iOS 13.4 due to the numerous bugs in iOS 13, but there are still plenty of new features in the works.”
Lets hope so the files app is very flawed at the moment.
Hi folks, I have the iPad Pro 2018 model, I made a few videos on transfer speeds with different ways of transferring files they might help a bit.
There is something odd going on with iPad OS and maybe the update coming out March 18 will hopefully fix it we shall see. It is currently much faster to transfer files onto the iPad than off from external devices depending on what your using.
Visit Mac Sound Solutions channel on YouTube
iPad Pro Transfer Speeds with iPad OS. Why so slow? How to get the fastest speeds.
&
iPad Pro Speed Test with Sandisk Extreme
I had a similar problem with a 1st gen iPad Pro.
Solution:
1. lightning-to-dual port lightning adapter with one port connected to AC power.
2. 2nd port connected to lightning-to-usb adapter, which connects to the usb-to-micro usb data cable on a powered usb travel hub, which also connects to AC power.
The missing link was the hub’s data cable. Nothing like the simple plug & play advice from Apple but the setup works perfectly now.
Use a powered hub and everything that are connected in the powered hub will show up on your ios 13 devices (iPhone 11 max, iPad 8th Gen, and iPad Pro).
Really frustrated. Iphone 11 Pro Max / SanDisk Extreme SSD 1 TB / Apple lightning to usb 3 adapter.
The files app doesn’t recognize the drive. Went out and bought a second Sandisk Extreme SSD 1TB, and still doesn’t recognize it.
I’ve formatted and reformatted in ExFat / Fat32 – no go.
Just had a glimpse of light – used an Anker lightning to USB-C with an 18W plug-in wall charger.
It came on last night, then after disconnecting and reconnecting to another outlet, no go, no matter what I did.
Today, plugged it all back in and it came back. Was going to get a powered hub, but the guy at BestBuy said that won’t work, because the power has to come from the Apple device.
I’m wondering if it’s my cable, now that’s it comes and goes (the files app sees the SSD and then it doesn’t).
So purchasing a powered hub will work? So lightning into the phone, hub into the Apple adapter and the SanDisk Extreme SSD into the powered hub, right??
Thanks so much Elizabeth! It’s amazing that even apple tech support has no clue.
Guess what?? It worked! Finally! That made so much sense – powered hub! What’s unbelievable is that Apple tech support had no clue whatsoever, as well as SanDisk themselves. They said “we’ve never experimented with the iphone and the SSD drives”.
Thanks so much – you have been a wealth of knowledge!
Jim Augustine
Vincent Nguyensays
As of today, 3/11/2020, my Seagate external disks are still having problems to be recognized by my IPad Air 2 running iPadOS 13.3.3.1 while my Western Digital have no problems..ALL are formatted in exFAT format…..My thumb USB drive and SD cards are all working. It is amazing to me that such a large well-known brand like Seagate is still problematic.
I hope Apple listens to this before releasing iPadOS 14.0.
Your article is excellent and it is a joy reading it.
This is definitely a “Brand name ” issue…ALL 3 of my Western Digital External Disks and USB/SD drive ( many brands) are working perfectly while the other 2 Seagates do not..Please add “Seagate” to ” glyph” to the list of currently non- compatible with iPadOS 13.3.3.1. I write this comment on March 5th 2020…Hopefully Apple will listen and resolve this issue pronto..
I’m using an external drive (SSD) with my iPhone 8 with iOS 13 and I’m using a hub to give the drive extra power so it is now usable on my iPhone.
I’ve checked the cables and power but the drive still randomly disconnects as soon as I plug in the drive. So I’ll see the drive and even my files on there fine, but seconds later it disconnects itself and I’m not sure how to resolve it?
I also restarted my iPhone. Is there any way to solve this issue?
A lot of users have similar issues and it seems that iOS 13.3 is the culprit. Many readers tell us that their external drives only reliably work when formatted as APFS (Apple File System.)
We fully expect Apple to fix this issue in the next update for iOS and iPadOS so all supported formats work reliably. In the meantime, if your drive is empty or if you can reformat it without too much difficulty, try using the APFS format and see if the problems go away.
Apple USB 3 camera adapter connected to iPhone 11 Pro not showing sansdisk ssd extreme formatted to exfat very disappointed after spending near on $400 for 1 Tb ssd and adaptor to find it was a waste of money
I connected the My Passport (not wireless) external HD to my iPad Pro 12.9 just bought this year. Initially it shows My Passport in the Locations of the folders, and initially I could open it up but get no further. Then My Passport disappeared from the Locations. Tried again and this time I got past the first folders to the next level of folders and documents. As I was scrolling, it shut down again. The HD is still spinning, but not registering on the screen. No error messages. not sure what’s going on.
Unfortunately, this was all too common with me. Found a workaround, the format favoured by iPadOS 13 is APFS. Haven’t tried the other formats yet, although if you are using that external HDD for your Mac time machine, chances are you will not be able to get the iPad to recognise the HDD.
What you can do, is to use disk utility on your mac, and create a low capacity partition in APFS on your HDD to see if your iPad can recognise the drive.
It’s an annoying workaround, but at least it beats waiting for a new update to fix this issue (knowing apple….)
Quick update on this matter, went to the Apple store to find out what is actually going on and have gotten a solution with regards to connecting and reading an external HDD.
Apparently, iPadOS 13.3 only reads HDD formatted in APFS.
Once done, you should be able to use your external drive as per usual.
PS: The guys at Apple also mentioned that hopefully this issue will be resolved in the next OS update.
Hello do you know or someone that might already used it if you add a adapter in apple TV 4k you can add an external hdd to see maybe 4k video movies that have on the hdd?
Hi I have tried to connect a seagate fast ssd 1tb using an apple camera connector and external power and formated with exfat, it showed up once when trying to move a file then nothing, any ideas?
A few readers found that they needed to add a hub with its own power source in addition to adding power to the Apple camera connector. If you have a hub or can borrow one, see if that works.
Also, a lot of our readers have trouble with exFAT drives working consistently with iOS 13 and iPadOS–especially with iOS/iPadOS 13.3.
I hope this can help someone else in a similar situation.
Hardware:
– Apple iPad 7th Gen 10.2″ running iPad OS 13.3.
– Seagate Expansion Portable 4TB (ExFAT-formatted)
– Apple USB 3 Camera Adapter
– Noname USB Hub with external power
I think I had to jump through all of the hoops to make this work. It took a while and the solution isn’t beautiful, but it works.
Connecting the external hard drive to the iPad using the USB to Lightning adapter obviously didn’t work, as the iPad complained about the device requiring too much power. I moved on to the USB 3 Camera Adapter. Got rid of the error message, but still no dice. Ah, harddrive was NTFS-formatted since a while back, so reformatted to ExFAT. Still doesn’t work. Pulled out a relatively cheap Noname USB hub with external power, and finally, the drive showed up in Files.
This solution requires power from two separate sources. Absolutely ridiculous. But works. Very curious to find out why the external drive needs to go through a USB hub in order to work – Not enough power from the USB 3 Camera Adapter?
This is the same exact issue I am having- my external hard drive works perfectly fine on my old MacBook Air but doesn’t even acknowledge it on my iPad 7 with all the same equipment. Thanks for the tip with an additional usb hub!
It seems as though after iPadOS 13.3 update, some power settings has been changed, and now the USB C port does not allocate enough power for external HDD, regardless of its capacity.
I have not had an issue prior to 13.3, therefore the above mentioned is purely my own assumption. Thumb drives still work, microSD cards still work via an adapter. However, external HDD don’t and it’s driving me nuts. Hopefully someone can chime in on what the hell is going on.
This is really frustrating. I‘ve just bought 2 x 2TB USB-C drives. One GDrive and one LacCie. Was eager to start editing a lot of old footage in LumaFusion with no need to transfer clips to local storage on my 2019 iPad Pro.
Both drives shows up in Files, but freezes and disconnects after a few minutes at best.
Tonight I deleted all content on the iPad and setting it up as a new device, just to be sure. Waste of time. No difference at all.
Do I need specific Thunderbolt cables? Isn’t the enclosed USB-C cables good enough?
Oh, that’s terrible. Apple does indeed recommend that you use Apple-branded or MFI (Made for iPad) certified cables when working with external drives and iPadOS. Before you go out an purchase those, if you know anyone that has a cable that you can test with, we recommend you do that to see if it does make a difference.
We are seeing vastly different reports of external drives not working with iOS 13.3–no matter what cable is used.
Yes, I’m sure it doesn’t help whatever cable you use.
It worked perfectly for me with 13.0 13.1 13.2. The problem appeared with 13.3.
Why can’t Apple just admit that they have lost control ?!
I have already wasted tons of hours with my iPhone X that started to behave weirdly, most problems seem power related (as this iPad problem).
I even got a replacement phone, but that one is even more affected. I have always bought expensive Apple products and justified it with that I knew they just worked without problems.
I’ve spent almost 5000USD on their products in the last two years. What a fool I’ve been.
You’re right, Eva. Just tried an Apple USB-C cable with no luck.
Thank god, my iPhone X, 2013 MacBook Pro and my 2011 iMac have never failed me. As a hardcore Mac user since 1998 I’ve used ridiculous amount of money on Apple gear. Good investments imho. Right now I’m booting my G4 Cube for the first time in over 10 years:)
Not so sure about new stuff. I guess you had bad luck.
I miss the good old days, Steve and 100% reliability.
Yeah, no joy as well. I believe it’s the version of iPadOS that’s screwing up. I am waiting for the next update to see if this issue is fixed. If not, I will have to sell the ipad away as it will be of no use to me.
In the mean time, please drop apple support a ticket, and let them know that this is currently a huge deal breaker for a lot of folks out there.
Hi, I just thought my problem was solved with the release of iOS 13.3.1 two days ago.
Plugged in my Samsung T5 and my iPad pro immediately detected it and I could reach my files, just as smoothly as before 13.3.
But after that, I tried with my Seagate with no luck. It worked perfectly with 13.0-13.2.
And when I now connect my T5 again it doesn’t show up on my iPad.
Until they get this to work as they claim it should I bought a SanDisk USB memory stick with 128GB which I can use without problems, but I would, of course, want to use my TB-drives instead
If you can’t get your SSD to talk to your iPad Pro with the adapter, try a different charger. Mine only connects if I have a higher capacity charger plugged into the lightning port of the adapter.
Thanks Dan for your great instructions.
Here comes my experience so far with an Iphone SE, IOS13: Works fine with 32GB SD cards, does not work with 1TB WD HDD, does not work with a 512GB SSD, and sometimes works and sometimes does not work with a 128GB pendrive. This last one is the worst, because you really don’t know what is the reason. I think probably it has to do with the power supply in the adapter. Using the Iphone charger is not enough.
Cheers from Barcelona
Lucian
Hi Dan,
thank you for your article first of all….
I am using an iPad mini 2019 with the update iPadOS 13.3.
If I want to connect an external SSD through the Apple orig. USB-lighthning connector (USB 3 Camera Adapter) + a powered connection, my iPad is not recognizing the external SSD, respectively cannot be seen in the file folder !
I also created the DCIM folder with subfolder 100APPLE, as you recommended, but that also didn’t work.
I followed your tip in absolutely the same way, with the intermediary hub, but not successful, unfortunately!
On the other hand, using an SD card reader connected to the USB 3 Camera Adapter, there no issue at all.
I have checked several different ones, they are recognized.
This is really a drawback if you need to deal with larger files, like 4k videos etc.
Hopefully, there will be soon a new update released to solve the issue.
Also strange that I couldn’t find anything on youtube yet…
I have a 2018 Gen 6 iPad with lightning connector running iPad OS 13. Tried connecting my Samsung T5 SSD drive to it both directly and via a powered usb hub but the iPad doesn’t see it. Tried with other powered external usb HDD drives but exactly the same. Took iPad and T5 drive to Apple Store and they tried to connect the two with an Apple lightning to usb camera connector, both whilst powered and non powered and they failed also – again the little blue light on the drive failed to show and nothing showing in the file app.
Earlier this autumn I had no problems connecting my Samsung T5 and my Seagate Backup plus to my iPad Pro 2018.
But when I tried today it doesn’t work with either of them.
I also tried with two different hubs. The disc just doesn’t show up in Files.
As it worked perfectly with earlier iOS13 versions, I wonder if this problem came with OS 13.3? Restarting the iPad doesn’t help.
Anyone else experienced this problem with 13.3?
Hi guys, I also met this problem today… I tried with 2 different USB/Lightning connectors but my Scandisk SSD extreme does not appear in the file app or is not recognized by my iPad ! 🙁
Just purchased Y-Disk for my ipads. The Y-Disk works fine on my older IPad but will not work on my iPad Air2. The iPad Air2 does not even read or recognize the Y-Disk. Do I have to allow use of Y-Disk somewhere in settings of the iPad Air2 ?
Sorry to hear about the issues with your iPad 2 and your Seagate drive.
We assume the Seagate drive has its own power source and is not dependent on your iPad or the adapter for power–is that correct?
What we suggest you do is restart your iPad and then connect the Seagate drive (with external power plugged into it directly) and a lightning cable plugged into power in the USB 3 Camera adapter. So you want to plug into both the standard USB Type-A socket to connect to your storage device (self-powered) and the Lightning socket to connect to your iPad’s external power supply.
See if that does the trick.
If not, try connecting your drive directly to the iPad without the USB Camera adapter–you may need a different cable for this.
my stick usb and external disk works perfectly with ios 13 and ipad pro 12.9 2nd or any mac , but appears empty on ipad pro 12.9 3rd
the disk is displayed in ios 13 files but looks totally empty
For some reason, your iPad and iPadOS does not successfully connect with that Seagate HD. Is the drive full of data? We often see this problem when the drive has a lot of data on it and the iPad (iPadOS) is unable to read it due to the large amount.
Try either connecting another drive (that’s empty or that doesn’t have a lot of data on it) or if possible, remove the data from the Seagate drive and see if the iPad can connect to it continuously.
My hope was to use my ipad pro as a photography backup solution using the files app and external storage however I am running into issues.
First, if I use a direct connection between my camera (Nikon D850) and the iPad the files app does not see the camera and I am only able to import the images into the ios photos app.
This works but it is not as direct as copying the images directly to a folder that will be backed up.
If I remove the card from the camera and connect a card reader to the iPad then the files app can see it.
However, when I copy a large number of raw files (@300 files/25GB) the process stalls before all of the files are copied.
This does not happen if they are imported into the photos app.
The same thing happens if I try to save imported files into a folder on the iPad using the files app or to an external drive.
In each case, the process stalls less than halfway through.
The issue seems to be the volume of data.
Each of these processes works perfectly for 50 files or less.
I haven’t experimented to find the upper limit that works.
Nothing seems to be getting overheated or even warm during the copying process so I don’t think it’s any kind of hardware fail-safe.
All this to say, iOS13 sounded promising for my photography backup needs but so far it’s failed to deliver.
All the advice is all very well, but even after updating to iOS 13, my FILES app on my iPad still doesn’t “see” anything other than Firefox, wtf? Using my third-party app iUSB, I can see everything on the memory card — but the FILES app doesn’t “see” anything there nor anywhere else. Why is that? Thankfully, iUSB works!
Connecting the Seagate Backup Plus Slim to my iPad Pro was a mixture of plenty of research combined with trial-and-error. But it is now functional.
I have not so far renamed any folders.
My sole observation is that, to my surprise, external power was critical to make connection live even though the Seagate drive seemed to be small and does not seem to have any moving parts.
Your several pages of comments were very helpful and I am sending them to friends interested in making similar changes to their IT set-up.
Thank you for sharing what worked for you and your external drive with iPad Pro.
Yes, we also see that access to power is the single most important factor to successfully connecting a drive to an iPad, iPhone, or iPod with iPadOS & iOS13.
Make sure you add power to your adapter, if available and plug into a wall outlet (not a computer USB port.) This product the Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter is the one Apple recommends for iOS 13 & iPadOS.
If you already own that particular cable AND plug it into power as well, then try closing all your apps and restarting your device. Then try transferring your photos.
Close an app
1. On an iPhone or an iPad with no home button from the Home screen, swipe up from the bottom of the screen and pause slightly in the middle of the screen
2. On an iDevice with a home button, double-click the Home button and swipe right or left to find the app that you want to close
3. Swipe right or left to locate the app you want to close
4. Swipe up on the app’s preview to close it
I’m an the owner of a 7th gen iPad and neither one of my external flash drives both equipped with a lightning port can connect to my iPhone and or my iPad. I have emailed Apple and spoken to them directly they were unaware of the problem does anyone have any suggestions on how to transfer files using an external hard drive from iPhone to iPad.
we’ve gotten quite a lot of reports of lightning flash drives not working with iPadOS and iOS 13 using the Files app. However, most people report the drives still work when using the third-party app that came with the lightning drive–is that your experience as well?
We can’t figure out why a drive works in iOS 12 and with third-party apps but is unrecognized in iOS 13 and iPadOS using the Files app!
So trying to connect a hard drive to the iPad
Basically the iPad can’t see it as in it doesn’t come up as an option under files
Have made sure the drives format is exfat , it’s a powered drive and plugged in etc
Any ideas
Does anyone have issue to reconnect a ssd after disconnecting it ?
I have a 11’ IPad Pro with a Samsung T5 and it works fine but if I disconnect it, it won’t be detected again. I only can make it work again once I use my ssd with my MacBook… Strange. Does someone know better?
Hi, after struggling to get any of my external 2.5″ HDDs working with my iPhone 11 pro (all work no problem on my USB-C Ipad Pro), I tried a powered USB hub.
Unfortunately for some reason when the hub was plugged into the mains, the phone couldn’t see the drive (tested using the iPad and also the same problem so looks like a wiring/circuitry issue maybe).
Also with this setup, even if it worked, it is an extra plug socket needed and not a portable solution.
I have now found what seems to be the best solution – a USB splitter cable with 1 female and 2 male sockets.
One of the male sockets does data and power (USB 3), and the other just does power so you can plug it into a spare socket on your USB charger or power bank.
Works perfectly, just 1 small extra cable to carry around and can use anywhere you have a spare USB port for power.
I updated my 10.5″ iPad Pro and iPhone 8 to iPadOS/iOS13. Both have the Lightning port.
iPad Pro:
I attached a Samsung flash drive via the required USB3 Camera Connection Kit using a 12W iPad Pro power adapter.
The Samsung flash drive get the “requires more power” message.
Same with a Samsung T3 SSD.
An older USB2 thumb drive works as advertised.
iPhone 8:
Same set up as above and EVERYTHING works just fine.
What is happening with the iPad Pro? Is there a setting somewhere?
FYI-When I first attached the USB3 CCK, a message came up that said the iPad Pro needed to update something with the CCK (Sorry, I don’t recall the exact verbiage of the message. I had used an older CCK to import photos from an SD card in the past. Not sure if that had anything to do with the “Update”.). It took about 3 minutes to update. This message and update did not appear when I attached the newer CCK to the iPhone 8. I had never used the older CCK with the iPhone.
It sounds like you did everything right. And it should work. What model is your iPad Pro and year purchased/built? Find that information in Settings > General > About.
Did you restart your iPad Pro after it updated the Camera Connection Kit? If not, perform a restart and then see if the drives now show up. It’s possible that it needed a restart to get those updated settings for the CCK recognized.
If your iPad continues not to work with those drives, send us those model details.
I download and install the new ipados trusting apple anouncment that new OS will support usb thumb drives. I connected my lighting Verbatin pendrive and nothing happened in files app.
The drive is working fine because the app store and go can detect correctly the drive.
In Apple ipados doesnt work. No explanation nor support fron Apple. Very dissappinted.
Regards
It’s likely that you need to add power for that external drive to work. The only iPad that seems to support (some) thumb drives without additional power is the iPad Pro 2018 USB-C model.
We suggest you invest in Apple’s Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter that has a USB port and a lightning port to plug power into when you connect a thumb drive. Although some third-party products work, most don’t supply power to the drive. So it’s best to stick with the Apple-branded adapter.
If you don’t want to invest in that right now, visit a nearby Apple Store and ask them if you can try it out to make sure it works with your iPad and thumb drive.
I have a 5th generation iPad and have been trying unsuccessfully to connect a Sandisk Extreme SSD.
I am using a recently purchased camera adaptor with power supplied to it, either using a standard iPad charger or an Anker 5 port USB charger. The camera adaptor did get the firmware upgrade when I first used it.
I have connected the SSD directly to the camera adaptor and also through a USB hub (not mains powered).
There are no error messages but the SSD never appears in the Files browser.
As a test, I connected to a friends iPad Pro USB C port. The SSD appeared instantly.
So, I’m guessing that is a problem getting sufficient power to the SSD.
I successfully tested an Apple iPad Pro 12.9-inch, 3rd generation, 1TB, Wi-Fi, with a Toshiba disk, in a fantec DB-ALU3e enclosure, that is powered by its own power supply, formatted by a Linux computer and connected with the iPad Pro by an Apple USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter, while the charging cable wasn’t connected.
Some CLI information about the iPad Pro and the USB drive, when connected with the Linux PC:
[[email protected] ~]$ ideviceinfo -u $(idevice_id -l)|grep -eClass -eModelN -eProductV|sed ‘s/ProductVersion/iPadOS/’
DeviceClass: iPad
ModelNumber: MTFR2
iPadOS: 13.1
[[email protected] ~]$ sudo smartctl -i /dev/sdf|grep Fam
Model Family: Toshiba P300
[[email protected] ~]$ lsblk -oTYPE,NAME,PTTYPE,TRAN,VENDOR,MODEL|grep -eN -edf\
TYPE NAME PTTYPE TRAN VENDOR MODEL
disk sdf dos usb ASMT TOSHIBA_HDWD110
[[email protected] ~]$ lsblk -oTYPE,NAME,FSTYPE,LABEL,SIZE,FSUSED,FSAVAIL,FSUSE%,PARTFLAGS|grep -eN -edf
TYPE NAME FSTYPE LABEL SIZE FSUSED FSAVAIL FSUSE% PARTFLAGS
disk sdf 931.5G
part ├─sdf1 ext4 u4.fantec 622.3G 287G 293.4G 47%
part ├─sdf2 vfat u4.fat32 103.3G 32K 103.3G 0%
part ├─sdf3 exfat u4.exfat 103.4G 3.8M 103.4G 0%
part └─sdf4 hfsplus u4.hfs 102.6G 195.2M 102.4G 0%
That’s what I tested, when the USB drive was connected to the iPad Pro:
After opening the File app and selecting “Browse” the “Location” widget does not show the ext4 partition, but it shows the fat32, exfat and hfs+ partitions, all by their label. Using lower case and a dot for the label of a fat32 partition might not work with Windows, but it does for Linux and iPadOS.
For testing purpose I selected “On My iPad” > “Auria Pro”, the folder of a DAW app and then selected an audio project, chose “More” > “Copy” > “u4.fat32” > “Paste”. No issue at all, so I continued by selecting “On My iPad” > “Auria Pro”, selecting the same project, followed by “Move” to “u4.exfat”, then creating a new folder and chose “Copy”. This worked, too. At next I opened the Photos app, selected 2 photos, chose “Save to Files” > “u4.hfs” and “Save”. It worked like a charm as well.
When finished I connected the drive to the Linux PC again, to take a look at the partitions:
The hidden folders and hidden files were created by iPadOS.
By this kind of file transfer, the HEIC pictures aren’t automatically converted to a more common file format.
On Linux, it’s possible to convert the pictures by command line. Users who aren’t comfortable with command line, maybe those who migrated from Windows to Linux, could use the cross-platform image editor GIMP. Most of the partitioning could be done without command line, using GParted.
It can create the partition table, hfs+ partitions with a label and fat32 partitions with a label.
Btw. if you try to name a fat32 partition “u4.fat32” with GParted, it automatically names it “U4FAT32”. I named it by command line, with root privileges running “fatlabel /dev/sdXY LABEL”.
GParted can’t create an exfat partition, but it can create an unformatted partition. An unformatted partition can be formatted to exfat by command line, by running “mkfs.exfat -nLABEL /dev/sdXY” with root privileges.
What a disappointment! I’ve just tried four different USB memory sticks (including quality, branded Sony and Sandisk drives and a USB 2.0 device) with a powered USB adaptor (camera connection kit, but not an Apple branded one) and all of them have returned the message “this accessory requires too much power”. I even made sure that the powered adaptor was charging the iPad first. I’m using a 2017 iPad Pro 9.7”, for this.
I’ve heard rumours that USB adaptors from 3rd party manufacturers (this one was bought on eBay) are sometimes not fully compatible but, before I go to the expense of an Apple-branded adaptor, I’d like to be sure that I’ll get a better result from doing that. What are other people’s experiences?
We’ve heard from several users that their third-party camera adapters are not providing power to their flash drives–when they switch out for the Apple-branded adapter–their drives get power and work with iOS 13 and iPadOS.
I just ran a test with my iPhone XR and a Kingston thumb drive–with third-party, it showed the not sufficient power message but with the Apple-branded adapter, it showed up in the files app!
We suggest you try borrowing someone else’s adapter or visit an Apple Store and ask them to try it out to make sure it works before purchasing.
Was hoping this feature would let me stick a load of purchased downloaded iTunes tv episodes onto an sd card and travel with it. However whilst the card shows up, and the movie file shows up in Files, I can’t open it. It’s 2GB (game of thrones episode 1) – is it too big?
I just download Ipados on my Ipad Pro 2018 model and all my USB thumb drives work using an Anker USB-C to usb3 connector.
However, I cannot see my Seagate external drive in the files app.
The light on the Seagate external drive lights up but the drive itself doesn’t show up on the iPad? I would appreciate any help possible. Maybe is not yet compatible with Ipados?
Hi! I have just updated my iPad Pro to iPadOS and tried to plug my Verbatim Store n Go (the one that comes with both USB A and Lightning connectors) and it is not picked up by the Files app. Nevertheless, I can use the drive with Verbatim’s app as I have been doing since I bought it, but I get no native support for it on the Files app (and no error messages either).
Thanks for your reply, Elizabeth. It’s indeed very strange, and I can’t also seem to be able to open two instances of Pages or Numbers… I’m really disappointed with this iPadOS thing
First of all, it would NOT let me update to ios13.1 directly on my phone over cellular (as promised) ….
I actually downloaded the ISPW files from a site this morning… VERY large… onto my iPhone 6S Plus and using the new Files app download feature I transferred the files to a flash drive… its VERY slow for large files.
At first I tried my 1tb portable drive – it seemed to power up ok (I have the apple adapter with power) ….. it was taking forever to show up on the list so I gave up…. but I think it was due to the fact that the drive was so large and iOS13 takes a while to read things…..
I’m going to transfer the update to my Mac and use iTunes to do the update from the saved files using the Option key and Restore selection from iTunes….. pretty happy we can FINALLY do this stuff on iOS….. it been wayyyyy too long !!!! 🙂 …. GREAT article….. thanks
– can you see how much space is left on a drive?
– do you get specific info about e.g a folder: how many files, how many KB are contained in it?
– can you see how large a file is?
– do you see transfering speeds?
– is the USB-C connection on the Ipad 5gbs or 10gbs (usb 3.1 gen 2)
1) We could not see how much space remains on an external drive using the Files app…there doesn’t seem to be a way, at least that we can find
2) We could also not see the size of a folder or how many items it contained without opening up that folder to see what’s in it
3) We could see the information about a single file–showing how large that file is by selecting the icon or list view. You can also tap and hold an item to open the File App’s Quick Action menu and choose info to get information on file type/kind, size, date created, date modified, and other pertinent information on that specific file
4) We could not see any specific information about the transfer speeds in our testing
5) The port on the iPad is a USB-c 3.1 Gen 2 that can support a maximum of 10 gigabits per second. However, to get those speeds you need to use a separate USB-C to USB-C cable that’s compliant to USB 3.0, USB 3.1 or Thunderbolt standards to get the 5-10 Gbps data transfer speeds. The cable that Apple includes with the iPad cable isn’t any faster than a lightning cable (USB 2.0.)
Hope that helps and if you find any updated information, like viewing transfer speeds let us know!
Issue of connecting a regular USB thumb drive to iPhone 8 with IOS 13, using the files app. I received an error that “there is not enough power for this device”.
Old school work-around:
Connect a non-powered USB HUB to the iPhone’s lightning connector with an adapter cable
Connect a USB thumb drive to USB Hub
USB drive is recognized, with no power issues
Able to browse all files on thumb drive
I tried all of this and still nothing is working. Though the error messages goes away with the USB hub, which is a start. And my regular USB stick works just fine. Any ideas? Thanks
Does your hub have its own power source? Try restarting your iPhone/iPad, then plug the external drive into a powered hub and see if this works for you. Or plug power into the camera adapter and see if the hub will power your drive that way.
Most external drive issues are due to lack of power or trying to use an NTFS or another unsupported format.
For the lightning USB drive, it may be a power issue–I know this sounds nuts since the drive was designed for the iPad. But we’ve seen reports that these older iPhone/iPad designed drives aren’t working like they used to in iOS 12 and below.
If you happen to have one of those Apple’s USB 3 Camera Dongles (or can borrow one), see if that works. Plug your drive into the USB port and a lightning power cable into the other port, then attach to your iPad. See if that does the trick.
For the SMB, a few users find that this is broken again in beta 7. But try the following:
Open the files app
Tap the top three-dot (ellipsis) button
Choose Connect to Server
Type in SMB://Enter in the NAME or IP address (some folks find it works with adding .local at the end while others find it works when not adding it–so try both ways)
Tap Next
Enter your login information
If it doesn’t work try turning off any VPN, if you have one enabled.
Wow! Thanks for the tip on “.local” for SMB. That made the Drobo show up. The Windows 10 SMB share gives “Invalid argument” when I specify it exactly the same as the Drobo.
The Lightning drive I have is just a USB thumb drive with both a Lightning connector and USB connector. It works fine using the proprietary app and with “Remote Files” app so I don’t think it’s a power issue.
Using the Drobo SMB I was able to “Download” a video and it shows in “On My iPad”. I was hoping that I could get the video to be visible in the “TV” app. Is there another step I need to perform?
I’ll look more into the invalid argument for Windows 10 SMB.
As far as the lightning drive, some folks and friends report similar issues with the Files app and their lightning drives (that they used successfully in earlier iOS versions). Once they plugged those into that camera adapter and plugged the adapter into power–the drive showed up!
If you have one of those adapters available or can borrow one, just give it a try and see if it shows up in the Files app. I wouldn’t buy anything new–because it does currently work for you with remote files and the manufacturer’s app–and we don’t know for sure if giving it power would indeed help.
Now, regarding movies and the TV app–our writer Andy is testing this out and working on an article right now. I know a lot of people want this same functionality to see their videos in the TV App–I haven’t been able to get this to work myself. But I know Andy is spending a lot more time on testing. So hopefully, he’ll discover some additional tips. So stay tuned.
Keep me posted if you find some workarounds and I’ll do the same,
Thanks. You have been so much help. I can live with the Drobo SMB access but the Lightning USB drive would be great! I don’t have the “Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter” and don’t know anyone to borrow one from. I think it’s odd that other apps can see/access the drive but “Files” can’t.
Similarly I can live with using the “Files” app to see/play the media I’ve copied to “On My iPad” but it’s awkward and doesn’t seem to meet the hype of iPadOS 13.
Hopefully, these types of bugs get worked on in the coming few weeks before the public release.
Consider adding your feedback using the feedback app that all beta versions offer. Apple developers do get this feedback directly–and they look into this data the most when an iOS is in its beta version.
And of course, we’ll keep testing and researching ourselves.
Liz
Dimas Oliveirasays
I am trying hard to use my iPad air 3 with IPADOS13 beta 6, BUT every time I’ve tried to copy 5Gb of jpgs from my Ipad to an external disk (which works on my Ipad) I get some error…. so I have to upload it to my NAS…
* I don’t believe it’s a HD error, I’ve tried on 3 different HD’s
* I think it’s something with the code, since I can read and edit but I cannot save multiple files at once.
IT”S TERRIBLE SLOW!!!! Like…. SLOW… TERRIBLE SLOW… 2.1Gb took me 11 minutes…
Please tell me what I am doing wrong.
* IpadOS13 Beta 6
* Expensive USB3-lightning adapter
* Seagate usb 4.0 1TB formated on ExFat
* Files app copying and pasting using just one window
* Nothing else running.
We don’t think you are doing anything wrong. What we recommend trying is to copy that 5GB in sections–like try 1 GB or 500 MB groupings–then see if performance improves.
Although the iPad (and iPhone too) does support external drives, it’s performance isn’t going to mirror our Macs or computers–iPads just don’t have the same processing speed and efficiencies. At least, not yet.
We also highly encourage you to submit a bug report using the feedback app.
If you can move info off the drive to temporarily store it elsewhere, some folks had success reformating their external drives, placing the data back on it, and then connecting to the iPad.
Follow these quick tips if your external hard drive is not working with your iPad or iPhone on iPadOS or iOS 13+:
Paul R Lowes says
I’ve now learned I should have stayed with Android instead of this Apple junk. Brand new ipad does not recognize external drives, or mouse and keyboard at times. Never had this issue with android stuff. I have owned Samsung products for years – phone, tablet, etc. and never crap like this. After reading this article, which basically is a good article, but is smoke because it doesn’t contain any real information for actual fixes, try this , try that, and finally hopefully Apple will make the changes. Sad fact that Apple puts this junk out after all these years of computing – they know their stuff isn’t compatible with android or windows features. So what makes them better? Nothing !
Adriana Beckett says
Dear Dann, Thanks for all your info. I need an advice to find out if I need an extra adapter , I want to download pics and data directly from I-Phone 13 Pro-max. I ‘m out of data, don’t care for i-cloud extra fees.
I got The Lightning to USB 3 Camera adapter for iPhone. . It didn’t work with a SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 Flash Drive, 512 GB. ccessory not supported, Requieres too much power…I didn’t notice that it works with windows and Mac. I don’t have a Mac. I didn’t understand the re-format process either. I don’t have a Hub yet . How ever, I’m not sure which one is best and cheaper, apple compatible… a what adapter do I need for a lightning to USB-C camera adapter for my IPad Pro… do I need one for each I-Phone 13 Pro-max and IPad Pro 5th ? In the other hand , I got a SanDisk Professional G-DIVE ArmorADT, 1TB but when I tried to conecte to iPad, same issue, accessory needs to be powered. It does not fit the one for iPhone… So got wron stuff.. or its complicated all that reformat thing. What do you suggest will solve issues ? Thanks for your kind advice.
Santa Hart says
I just got an external drive for my ipad and it disconnected while something was being moved to it, now it will not show up under files and I have no idea how to fix that. This article didn’t help :/
Rami P says
Had the same issue, let me know if you resolved your side of technical problems, I’d like to learn from another person who’s experiencing the same inconvenience and perhaps someone else’s solution may fix mine.
Stephen says
My iPad Air 4 has ios15 but is unable to recognise the crucial 2t portable ssd when connected. It was able to connect initially but after a dialog problem which I don’t understand the ssd is not recognised. Any suggestions would be helpful.
Domian M. Waters says
I hope I can explain my situation properly so I can get assistance. I don’t know how to allow my iPad to get full editing access to my hard drive. For example, I cannot delete files, because my iPad says “read only” with an icon that looks like a cross through a pencil. How do I allow my iPad access to edit my files on my hard drive?
Hans Erdmann says
SDD with proper connection stopped reading when all files were stored directly under it without any folder wher they were before stored when it worked! Is there a limitation on number of files or naming or extensions used? farmated in EXFAT SSD Samsung about 500GB on last IPAd with lightening! USB otherwise worgs wit sticks! Soe CLUE what to do?
Edmond says
Peculiar Case,
Devices + iPadOS
– iPad Pro 2018
– iPadOS 14.3
– Two identical Hard drives powered.
– File-hub also powered and switchable between 7 connections
– File-hub wired to iPad Pro
The two hard drives were used as a RAID when using a Mac, now I wanted to use them as RAID connected to my iPad Pro to find out if that would work or not. So both connected via file-hub and later also separately.
Result: iPad Pro can not see these two hard drives a a RAID. Was to be expected.
But the beauty was that the iPad Pro mounted them separately fine. One time and one time only they even mounted both. One designated by the name of the RAID the other as Untitled. Interesting.
However most of that time only one drive could be seen and when mounting one drive alone at the time it just went fine. Didn’t matter which of the two drives in that case, it mounted with the RAID name.
So basically I had no use anymore for the RAID setup as I work exclusively on the iPad Pro. Therefore I reformatted the drives separately with macOS Extended ( Journaled) on the old, very old, bit still working iBook. Seemed like a good idea. Snifs
Result: iPad Pro does not see them at all anymore drives are not mounting. Bummer. Tried out with only one drive at the time an no other devices attached to the file hub. Both attached at the same time also no nothing at all, well that figured.
Totally flabbergasted
My level of expertise ends here. Help!!
Many thanks in advance. Edmond
Nikos says
Hi Dan,
I have an iPad pro 9.7 and i bought the lightening to usb camera adapter too. When i tried any thumb drive is working like a charm but the external hard drive doesn’t. It showed up on the file and disappears immediately. in both cases i have power connected on the adapter and the filesystem is HFS+.
Is it power issue for the external hdd?
Jose says
Nice article. I have a WD Passport Portable SSD 1TB and using it with my iPad it’s like playing lottery, sometimes I’m lucky and works really well, and sometimes the hd it’s not on the list and I can’t use it. Looks like the iPad didn’t recognize it, but he did the day before. Why this happened and how could I fix it. Thanks in advance.
trev says
Hi i have an i pad air and i want to transfer data from that to my seagat hard drive i have got the apple camera adapter and a wired hub plugged it all in but nothing on i pad in files app can you help i have reformatted it but still nothing the hub is AUKRU with4 usb ports
thanks
Paul says
Hi, I cannot connect WD My Passport SSD to my iPhone 11 pro iOS13, even though I use an Apple dongle USB Camera and lightning connector. I looked for software updates on WD website for the SSD but did not find any. The My Passport SSD does connect to iPad pro iOS13 though, and to my PC. It says it is formatted as exFAT.
Any suggestion to enable that connection?
Thank you.
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Paul.
This sounds like a power issue since it works with your iPad Pro but not with your iPhone. What’s worked for others in similar situations is connecting the drive to a self-powered hub and then connecting that hub to the dongle.
Martin says
Hello,
has somebody experienced on iPad Pro with SSD drive (Sandisk/Samsung) issues with copying files?
My case:
– files created or edited on iPad and copied back to SSD sometimes vanished, sometimes are not copied, sometimes drive is showing zero Kb.
Angel says
This just happened to me. Files just vanished and I have no idea why.
Joe Puleo says
Great article! One question I have about my iPad Pro.
I have an external hard drive that works great to store my drone footage, BUT I cannot figure out how to see how much storage is used on my 2TB external drive.
When it’s connected I can get information about the drive and content but NOT how much space is used.
Any suggestions would be gratefully appreciated!
Coming from Windows it was an easy thing to do. Thank you!
Steve says
Thanks, apple for another knockback
Jen says
Hi, I have an old PC running windows 10.
I want to save my files on an external hard drive (mostly lots of family photos), I am going to buy an iPad air 3 as soon as they come back into stock this month and want to be able to transfer from the external hard drive to make photo books and edit photos if need be.
I bought a Seagate external hard drive today.
From the comments below am I right in understanding that this external hard drive won’t work with the iPad air 3?
Could you please guide me in what would work, please?
Many thanks! Jen
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Jen,
A Windows external drive will work with iPadOS if it’s formatted as exFAT. So you made need to reformat the hard drive using your Windows 10 computer to ensure it’s exFAT.
We suggest once you reformat the drive, run a test with the iPad to ensure the drive is recognized in the Files app before moving large amounts of photos onto it. Try adding just a few photos, along with a folder containing 5-10 photos. See if the iPad sees the drive and the files & folders.
If it does, then you are good to go to move larger amounts using the HD on both your computer and your iPad.
Good luck,
Liz
SaiTech says
Thank you for these tips and explanations.
Now I understand how it works.
I have an extra SSD drive and I tried to connect to my iPad Pro 11 (2020), and it doesn’t connect.
I’ve tried every possible cable connections in order to connect and it doesn’t work too, but when I tried to connect my micro sd card (32gb) it easily gets connected to the device (Ipad).
I don’t have a Mac computer to connect to, and can’t find some answers/experiments.
So I tried to find out the format of my micro sd card which is formatted to Fat32.
Now I then connect my SSD drive 1tb to my laptop and try to format the same with my sd card, the problem is there is no option to format to Fat32 instead ExFat format is available to choose, because of it I continued to format my 1tb SSD card to Exfat.
After a successful format to ExFat, I tried again to connect my 1tb SSD ExFat formatted to my Ipad, and yes! it works.
Now, I can use my SSD drive 1tb both in Windows and IOS 13 Ipad Pro (2020).
Then I found this Article regarding which formats would be compatible for SSD drive for Ipad OS 13.
Now I’m happy and understood how it works.
Great Article!!! Thank you.
Derek says
Many thanks Elizabeth for the explanation and I look forward to the next iOS release. Here’s hoping.
Derek says
Further to my previous enquire the file I’m calling a zip file has a z on not the word zip ?
Derek says
I recently purchased an Samsung T5 to use with my iPad Pro 9.7 and have successfully to transfer many photos to do free up space on the iPad.
The problem is I don’t know how to view remaining storage capacity on the SSD, l’m also unable to install the setup software supplied on the SSD and just get a response the file is empty.
I’ve downloaded software from Samsung which was a zip file and with the response is as before .
Do I need that software to view the remaining capacity of the SSD?
My iPad is up to date with 13.4. I am a 72 year old newbie so please be gentle.
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Derek,
You have discovered one of the biggest shortcomings with iPadOS/iOS external drive integration. You cannot at this time get a quick snapshot of your external drive’s stats, including storage available, used, and remaining.
It’s very frustrating.
Some readers recommend a third-party app called System Status Pro (runs about $4) that provides information on storage–we have not had an opportunity to test and verify that this app does recognize external drives. As an FYI, a few of our readers tell us that it does. But again, we have not confirmed that.
What most folks do is connect that same drive to a Mac to get more detailed information about the external drive.
The software from Samsung is for a computer, not an iPad and that’s why it won’t work.
The T5 is a great external drive for your iPad–you are using the right stuff. It’s just too bad that Apple neglected to include such basic drive information–hopefully, iOS 14 corrects that mistake.
Lance says
From Mac Rumors web site “Apple is said to be focusing on performance and quality in iOS 13.4 due to the numerous bugs in iOS 13, but there are still plenty of new features in the works.”
Lets hope so the files app is very flawed at the moment.
Lance says
Oops sorry I meant iPadOS 13.4, which will be released on March 24. Not iOS 14…
Lance says
Hi folks, I have the iPad Pro 2018 model, I made a few videos on transfer speeds with different ways of transferring files they might help a bit.
There is something odd going on with iPad OS and maybe the update coming out March 18 will hopefully fix it we shall see. It is currently much faster to transfer files onto the iPad than off from external devices depending on what your using.
Visit Mac Sound Solutions channel on YouTube
iPad Pro Transfer Speeds with iPad OS. Why so slow? How to get the fastest speeds.
&
iPad Pro Speed Test with Sandisk Extreme
FMS says
I had a similar problem with a 1st gen iPad Pro.
Solution:
1. lightning-to-dual port lightning adapter with one port connected to AC power.
2. 2nd port connected to lightning-to-usb adapter, which connects to the usb-to-micro usb data cable on a powered usb travel hub, which also connects to AC power.
The missing link was the hub’s data cable. Nothing like the simple plug & play advice from Apple but the setup works perfectly now.
Dr3 says
Use a powered hub and everything that are connected in the powered hub will show up on your ios 13 devices (iPhone 11 max, iPad 8th Gen, and iPad Pro).
James Augustine says
Really frustrated. Iphone 11 Pro Max / SanDisk Extreme SSD 1 TB / Apple lightning to usb 3 adapter.
The files app doesn’t recognize the drive. Went out and bought a second Sandisk Extreme SSD 1TB, and still doesn’t recognize it.
I’ve formatted and reformatted in ExFat / Fat32 – no go.
Just had a glimpse of light – used an Anker lightning to USB-C with an 18W plug-in wall charger.
It came on last night, then after disconnecting and reconnecting to another outlet, no go, no matter what I did.
Today, plugged it all back in and it came back. Was going to get a powered hub, but the guy at BestBuy said that won’t work, because the power has to come from the Apple device.
I’m wondering if it’s my cable, now that’s it comes and goes (the files app sees the SSD and then it doesn’t).
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi James,
Using a self-powered hub usually works, so we are not sure why Best Buy suggested otherwise.
James Augustine says
So purchasing a powered hub will work? So lightning into the phone, hub into the Apple adapter and the SanDisk Extreme SSD into the powered hub, right??
Thanks so much Elizabeth! It’s amazing that even apple tech support has no clue.
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi James,
While I cannot guarantee 100% this will work for you, it does work for us and many of our readers tell us this is what ultimately worked for them.
Here’s the setup that worked for us:
1) plug the adapter directly into your iPhone
2) plug the iPhone charger’s lightning cable into the adapter
3) plug the hub into a wall outlet
4) plug the external hard drive into the hub
5) plug the hub into the adapter
Please let us know if this worked for you.
James Augustine says
Guess what?? It worked! Finally! That made so much sense – powered hub! What’s unbelievable is that Apple tech support had no clue whatsoever, as well as SanDisk themselves. They said “we’ve never experimented with the iphone and the SSD drives”.
Thanks so much – you have been a wealth of knowledge!
Jim Augustine
Vincent Nguyen says
As of today, 3/11/2020, my Seagate external disks are still having problems to be recognized by my IPad Air 2 running iPadOS 13.3.3.1 while my Western Digital have no problems..ALL are formatted in exFAT format…..My thumb USB drive and SD cards are all working. It is amazing to me that such a large well-known brand like Seagate is still problematic.
I hope Apple listens to this before releasing iPadOS 14.0.
Your article is excellent and it is a joy reading it.
vincent v Nguyen says
This is definitely a “Brand name ” issue…ALL 3 of my Western Digital External Disks and USB/SD drive ( many brands) are working perfectly while the other 2 Seagates do not..Please add “Seagate” to ” glyph” to the list of currently non- compatible with iPadOS 13.3.3.1. I write this comment on March 5th 2020…Hopefully Apple will listen and resolve this issue pronto..
Jerry Diver says
Same issue with Seagate external drive is not recognized. Hope Apple corrects soon.
Michael Davies says
Hi. Can you help? I have connected my external hard drive to my new iPad pro.
All the files show up ok on the iPad but all photos are faded and difficult to see.
There are no messages coming up about a lack of power or anything else.
The hard drive is a Toshiba 500gig.
Document files and letters etc show up ok but photos are faded and unresponsive.
Regards Michael
Clemens Zobel says
Hi
Is it possible with ipadOS to use a dvd drive equipped with usb3 on my ipadpro 2019?
Kind regards, C.
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Clemens,
DVD drives are not officially supported. But you should give it a try!
Film2240 says
I’m using an external drive (SSD) with my iPhone 8 with iOS 13 and I’m using a hub to give the drive extra power so it is now usable on my iPhone.
I’ve checked the cables and power but the drive still randomly disconnects as soon as I plug in the drive. So I’ll see the drive and even my files on there fine, but seconds later it disconnects itself and I’m not sure how to resolve it?
I also restarted my iPhone. Is there any way to solve this issue?
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Film2240,
A lot of users have similar issues and it seems that iOS 13.3 is the culprit. Many readers tell us that their external drives only reliably work when formatted as APFS (Apple File System.)
We fully expect Apple to fix this issue in the next update for iOS and iPadOS so all supported formats work reliably. In the meantime, if your drive is empty or if you can reformat it without too much difficulty, try using the APFS format and see if the problems go away.
Liz
paul snowball says
Apple USB 3 camera adapter connected to iPhone 11 Pro not showing sansdisk ssd extreme formatted to exfat very disappointed after spending near on $400 for 1 Tb ssd and adaptor to find it was a waste of money
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Paul,
Try formatting the drive to an Apple format like APFS or macOS Extended journaled.
Many users on iOS 13.3 report that their external drives are only working with these Apple formats.
Andrea says
I connected the My Passport (not wireless) external HD to my iPad Pro 12.9 just bought this year. Initially it shows My Passport in the Locations of the folders, and initially I could open it up but get no further. Then My Passport disappeared from the Locations. Tried again and this time I got past the first folders to the next level of folders and documents. As I was scrolling, it shut down again. The HD is still spinning, but not registering on the screen. No error messages. not sure what’s going on.
Benson says
Unfortunately, this was all too common with me. Found a workaround, the format favoured by iPadOS 13 is APFS. Haven’t tried the other formats yet, although if you are using that external HDD for your Mac time machine, chances are you will not be able to get the iPad to recognise the HDD.
What you can do, is to use disk utility on your mac, and create a low capacity partition in APFS on your HDD to see if your iPad can recognise the drive.
It’s an annoying workaround, but at least it beats waiting for a new update to fix this issue (knowing apple….)
Benson says
Quick update on this matter, went to the Apple store to find out what is actually going on and have gotten a solution with regards to connecting and reading an external HDD.
Apparently, iPadOS 13.3 only reads HDD formatted in APFS.
Once done, you should be able to use your external drive as per usual.
PS: The guys at Apple also mentioned that hopefully this issue will be resolved in the next OS update.
George says
Hello do you know or someone that might already used it if you add a adapter in apple TV 4k you can add an external hdd to see maybe 4k video movies that have on the hdd?
Stephen says
Hi cannot get GoPro hero 5 black to show in files anyone else have this problem
Hugh Morrison says
Hi I have tried to connect a seagate fast ssd 1tb using an apple camera connector and external power and formated with exfat, it showed up once when trying to move a file then nothing, any ideas?
SK says
HI Hugh,
A few readers found that they needed to add a hub with its own power source in addition to adding power to the Apple camera connector. If you have a hub or can borrow one, see if that works.
Also, a lot of our readers have trouble with exFAT drives working consistently with iOS 13 and iPadOS–especially with iOS/iPadOS 13.3.
Michael says
I hope this can help someone else in a similar situation.
Hardware:
– Apple iPad 7th Gen 10.2″ running iPad OS 13.3.
– Seagate Expansion Portable 4TB (ExFAT-formatted)
– Apple USB 3 Camera Adapter
– Noname USB Hub with external power
I think I had to jump through all of the hoops to make this work. It took a while and the solution isn’t beautiful, but it works.
Connecting the external hard drive to the iPad using the USB to Lightning adapter obviously didn’t work, as the iPad complained about the device requiring too much power. I moved on to the USB 3 Camera Adapter. Got rid of the error message, but still no dice. Ah, harddrive was NTFS-formatted since a while back, so reformatted to ExFAT. Still doesn’t work. Pulled out a relatively cheap Noname USB hub with external power, and finally, the drive showed up in Files.
This solution requires power from two separate sources. Absolutely ridiculous. But works. Very curious to find out why the external drive needs to go through a USB hub in order to work – Not enough power from the USB 3 Camera Adapter?
Hope this helped,
Michael
Ahra says
This is the same exact issue I am having- my external hard drive works perfectly fine on my old MacBook Air but doesn’t even acknowledge it on my iPad 7 with all the same equipment. Thanks for the tip with an additional usb hub!
Benson says
It seems as though after iPadOS 13.3 update, some power settings has been changed, and now the USB C port does not allocate enough power for external HDD, regardless of its capacity.
I have not had an issue prior to 13.3, therefore the above mentioned is purely my own assumption. Thumb drives still work, microSD cards still work via an adapter. However, external HDD don’t and it’s driving me nuts. Hopefully someone can chime in on what the hell is going on.
Jan Hammershaug says
This is really frustrating. I‘ve just bought 2 x 2TB USB-C drives. One GDrive and one LacCie. Was eager to start editing a lot of old footage in LumaFusion with no need to transfer clips to local storage on my 2019 iPad Pro.
Both drives shows up in Files, but freezes and disconnects after a few minutes at best.
Tonight I deleted all content on the iPad and setting it up as a new device, just to be sure. Waste of time. No difference at all.
Do I need specific Thunderbolt cables? Isn’t the enclosed USB-C cables good enough?
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Jan,
Oh, that’s terrible. Apple does indeed recommend that you use Apple-branded or MFI (Made for iPad) certified cables when working with external drives and iPadOS. Before you go out an purchase those, if you know anyone that has a cable that you can test with, we recommend you do that to see if it does make a difference.
We are seeing vastly different reports of external drives not working with iOS 13.3–no matter what cable is used.
Liz
Jan Hammershaug says
Thanks for your answer, Liz
Both drives was ordered from Apple, so they should be «qualified» imho, but I will test some other cables as soon as I can.
Eva Gustafsson says
Yes, I’m sure it doesn’t help whatever cable you use.
It worked perfectly for me with 13.0 13.1 13.2. The problem appeared with 13.3.
Why can’t Apple just admit that they have lost control ?!
I have already wasted tons of hours with my iPhone X that started to behave weirdly, most problems seem power related (as this iPad problem).
I even got a replacement phone, but that one is even more affected. I have always bought expensive Apple products and justified it with that I knew they just worked without problems.
I’ve spent almost 5000USD on their products in the last two years. What a fool I’ve been.
Jan Hammershaug says
You’re right, Eva. Just tried an Apple USB-C cable with no luck.
Thank god, my iPhone X, 2013 MacBook Pro and my 2011 iMac have never failed me. As a hardcore Mac user since 1998 I’ve used ridiculous amount of money on Apple gear. Good investments imho. Right now I’m booting my G4 Cube for the first time in over 10 years:)
Not so sure about new stuff. I guess you had bad luck.
I miss the good old days, Steve and 100% reliability.
Benson says
Yeah, no joy as well. I believe it’s the version of iPadOS that’s screwing up. I am waiting for the next update to see if this issue is fixed. If not, I will have to sell the ipad away as it will be of no use to me.
In the mean time, please drop apple support a ticket, and let them know that this is currently a huge deal breaker for a lot of folks out there.
Eva Gustafsson says
Hi, I just thought my problem was solved with the release of iOS 13.3.1 two days ago.
Plugged in my Samsung T5 and my iPad pro immediately detected it and I could reach my files, just as smoothly as before 13.3.
But after that, I tried with my Seagate with no luck. It worked perfectly with 13.0-13.2.
And when I now connect my T5 again it doesn’t show up on my iPad.
Until they get this to work as they claim it should I bought a SanDisk USB memory stick with 128GB which I can use without problems, but I would, of course, want to use my TB-drives instead
Lucian Segura says
Update: bought pendrive Sandisk 128GB, works fine even without external power
Random Guy says
If you can’t get your SSD to talk to your iPad Pro with the adapter, try a different charger. Mine only connects if I have a higher capacity charger plugged into the lightning port of the adapter.
Lucian Segura says
In my comment before, I forgot to say that the 32GB SD cards work without the power supply
Lucian Segura says
Thanks Dan for your great instructions.
Here comes my experience so far with an Iphone SE, IOS13: Works fine with 32GB SD cards, does not work with 1TB WD HDD, does not work with a 512GB SSD, and sometimes works and sometimes does not work with a 128GB pendrive. This last one is the worst, because you really don’t know what is the reason. I think probably it has to do with the power supply in the adapter. Using the Iphone charger is not enough.
Cheers from Barcelona
Lucian
Ralf Weimar says
Hi Dan,
thank you for your article first of all….
I am using an iPad mini 2019 with the update iPadOS 13.3.
If I want to connect an external SSD through the Apple orig. USB-lighthning connector (USB 3 Camera Adapter) + a powered connection, my iPad is not recognizing the external SSD, respectively cannot be seen in the file folder !
I also created the DCIM folder with subfolder 100APPLE, as you recommended, but that also didn’t work.
I followed your tip in absolutely the same way, with the intermediary hub, but not successful, unfortunately!
On the other hand, using an SD card reader connected to the USB 3 Camera Adapter, there no issue at all.
I have checked several different ones, they are recognized.
This is really a drawback if you need to deal with larger files, like 4k videos etc.
Hopefully, there will be soon a new update released to solve the issue.
Also strange that I couldn’t find anything on youtube yet…
Thank you for your attention
Ralf
Henry Stephenson says
I have a 2018 Gen 6 iPad with lightning connector running iPad OS 13. Tried connecting my Samsung T5 SSD drive to it both directly and via a powered usb hub but the iPad doesn’t see it. Tried with other powered external usb HDD drives but exactly the same. Took iPad and T5 drive to Apple Store and they tried to connect the two with an Apple lightning to usb camera connector, both whilst powered and non powered and they failed also – again the little blue light on the drive failed to show and nothing showing in the file app.
Eva Gustafsson says
Hi, this is interesting but frustrating.
Earlier this autumn I had no problems connecting my Samsung T5 and my Seagate Backup plus to my iPad Pro 2018.
But when I tried today it doesn’t work with either of them.
I also tried with two different hubs. The disc just doesn’t show up in Files.
As it worked perfectly with earlier iOS13 versions, I wonder if this problem came with OS 13.3? Restarting the iPad doesn’t help.
Anyone else experienced this problem with 13.3?
best regards
Eva Gustafsson
Lia says
Please tell me if you can fix it. I have same probs
Ralf says
Hi guys, I also met this problem today… I tried with 2 different USB/Lightning connectors but my Scandisk SSD extreme does not appear in the file app or is not recognized by my iPad ! 🙁
steve says
Thanks for the update on the partition types.
Kim says
Just purchased Y-Disk for my ipads. The Y-Disk works fine on my older IPad but will not work on my iPad Air2. The iPad Air2 does not even read or recognize the Y-Disk. Do I have to allow use of Y-Disk somewhere in settings of the iPad Air2 ?
Thank you
Kim
Taylor says
I just bought the Seagate portable drive and the light for the external drive doesn’t come on when I plug it into my IPad.
I know the drive is working because it turns on and functions when I plug it into my Chromebook.
I have a newer iPad model and it is updated to the current IOS.
I am connecting the external drive to my IPad with the Apple Lightning to USB 3 Camera adapter.
My external drive is in the correct format of exFAT.
I’m just not understanding why it won’t even turn on or be recognized by my IPad? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Elizabeth Jones says
HI Taylor,
Sorry to hear about the issues with your iPad 2 and your Seagate drive.
We assume the Seagate drive has its own power source and is not dependent on your iPad or the adapter for power–is that correct?
What we suggest you do is restart your iPad and then connect the Seagate drive (with external power plugged into it directly) and a lightning cable plugged into power in the USB 3 Camera adapter. So you want to plug into both the standard USB Type-A socket to connect to your storage device (self-powered) and the Lightning socket to connect to your iPad’s external power supply.
See if that does the trick.
If not, try connecting your drive directly to the iPad without the USB Camera adapter–you may need a different cable for this.
Erick says
my stick usb and external disk works perfectly with ios 13 and ipad pro 12.9 2nd or any mac , but appears empty on ipad pro 12.9 3rd
the disk is displayed in ios 13 files but looks totally empty
Matt says
I have a seagate hard drive which has mains power to it, it will flash up saying it is connected then vanish on my iPad Pro. What does that mean?
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Matt,
For some reason, your iPad and iPadOS does not successfully connect with that Seagate HD. Is the drive full of data? We often see this problem when the drive has a lot of data on it and the iPad (iPadOS) is unable to read it due to the large amount.
Try either connecting another drive (that’s empty or that doesn’t have a lot of data on it) or if possible, remove the data from the Seagate drive and see if the iPad can connect to it continuously.
Liz
Mark Kilkie says
My hope was to use my ipad pro as a photography backup solution using the files app and external storage however I am running into issues.
First, if I use a direct connection between my camera (Nikon D850) and the iPad the files app does not see the camera and I am only able to import the images into the ios photos app.
This works but it is not as direct as copying the images directly to a folder that will be backed up.
If I remove the card from the camera and connect a card reader to the iPad then the files app can see it.
However, when I copy a large number of raw files (@300 files/25GB) the process stalls before all of the files are copied.
This does not happen if they are imported into the photos app.
The same thing happens if I try to save imported files into a folder on the iPad using the files app or to an external drive.
In each case, the process stalls less than halfway through.
The issue seems to be the volume of data.
Each of these processes works perfectly for 50 files or less.
I haven’t experimented to find the upper limit that works.
Nothing seems to be getting overheated or even warm during the copying process so I don’t think it’s any kind of hardware fail-safe.
All this to say, iOS13 sounded promising for my photography backup needs but so far it’s failed to deliver.
Everett Ellestad says
All the advice is all very well, but even after updating to iOS 13, my FILES app on my iPad still doesn’t “see” anything other than Firefox, wtf? Using my third-party app iUSB, I can see everything on the memory card — but the FILES app doesn’t “see” anything there nor anywhere else. Why is that? Thankfully, iUSB works!
John Carroll says
Hello Dan Helyer:
Connecting the Seagate Backup Plus Slim to my iPad Pro was a mixture of plenty of research combined with trial-and-error. But it is now functional.
I have not so far renamed any folders.
My sole observation is that, to my surprise, external power was critical to make connection live even though the Seagate drive seemed to be small and does not seem to have any moving parts.
Your several pages of comments were very helpful and I am sending them to friends interested in making similar changes to their IT set-up.
Thank you
John Carroll
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi John,
Thank you for sharing what worked for you and your external drive with iPad Pro.
Yes, we also see that access to power is the single most important factor to successfully connecting a drive to an iPad, iPhone, or iPod with iPadOS & iOS13.
Liz
nathaniel says
hi my camera adapter is very slow even at copyng single images . please help
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Nathaniel,
Make sure you add power to your adapter, if available and plug into a wall outlet (not a computer USB port.) This product the Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter is the one Apple recommends for iOS 13 & iPadOS.
If you already own that particular cable AND plug it into power as well, then try closing all your apps and restarting your device. Then try transferring your photos.
Close an app
1. On an iPhone or an iPad with no home button from the Home screen, swipe up from the bottom of the screen and pause slightly in the middle of the screen
2. On an iDevice with a home button, double-click the Home button and swipe right or left to find the app that you want to close
3. Swipe right or left to locate the app you want to close
4. Swipe up on the app’s preview to close it
Andrew says
I’m an the owner of a 7th gen iPad and neither one of my external flash drives both equipped with a lightning port can connect to my iPhone and or my iPad. I have emailed Apple and spoken to them directly they were unaware of the problem does anyone have any suggestions on how to transfer files using an external hard drive from iPhone to iPad.
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Andrew,
we’ve gotten quite a lot of reports of lightning flash drives not working with iPadOS and iOS 13 using the Files app. However, most people report the drives still work when using the third-party app that came with the lightning drive–is that your experience as well?
We can’t figure out why a drive works in iOS 12 and with third-party apps but is unrecognized in iOS 13 and iPadOS using the Files app!
Liz
paul forgette says
So trying to connect a hard drive to the iPad
Basically the iPad can’t see it as in it doesn’t come up as an option under files
Have made sure the drives format is exfat , it’s a powered drive and plugged in etc
Any ideas
Sam says
Does anyone have issue to reconnect a ssd after disconnecting it ?
I have a 11’ IPad Pro with a Samsung T5 and it works fine but if I disconnect it, it won’t be detected again. I only can make it work again once I use my ssd with my MacBook… Strange. Does someone know better?
Fraser says
Hi, after struggling to get any of my external 2.5″ HDDs working with my iPhone 11 pro (all work no problem on my USB-C Ipad Pro), I tried a powered USB hub.
Unfortunately for some reason when the hub was plugged into the mains, the phone couldn’t see the drive (tested using the iPad and also the same problem so looks like a wiring/circuitry issue maybe).
Also with this setup, even if it worked, it is an extra plug socket needed and not a portable solution.
I have now found what seems to be the best solution – a USB splitter cable with 1 female and 2 male sockets.
One of the male sockets does data and power (USB 3), and the other just does power so you can plug it into a spare socket on your USB charger or power bank.
Works perfectly, just 1 small extra cable to carry around and can use anywhere you have a spare USB port for power.
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Fraser,
Thanks for sharing that tip! That’s awesome that it worked.
Liz
Nim says
Hi
Is it not possible to play downloaded iTunes movies directly from external storage on an iPad?
Thanks
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Nim,
Check out this post for questions about playing videos on an external drive with iOS 13 and iPadOS: How to watch movies from an external drive on your iPad with iPadOS
Nim says
Thank you.
Seems like a huge oversight for Apple not to allow legally downloaded iTunes content to play from an external hard drive! Gutted.
Particularly odd when my Microsoft Surface Go can play the same downloaded content via iTunes without an internet connection from its sd card slot!
Maris says
I updated my 10.5″ iPad Pro and iPhone 8 to iPadOS/iOS13. Both have the Lightning port.
iPad Pro:
I attached a Samsung flash drive via the required USB3 Camera Connection Kit using a 12W iPad Pro power adapter.
The Samsung flash drive get the “requires more power” message.
Same with a Samsung T3 SSD.
An older USB2 thumb drive works as advertised.
iPhone 8:
Same set up as above and EVERYTHING works just fine.
What is happening with the iPad Pro? Is there a setting somewhere?
FYI-When I first attached the USB3 CCK, a message came up that said the iPad Pro needed to update something with the CCK (Sorry, I don’t recall the exact verbiage of the message. I had used an older CCK to import photos from an SD card in the past. Not sure if that had anything to do with the “Update”.). It took about 3 minutes to update. This message and update did not appear when I attached the newer CCK to the iPhone 8. I had never used the older CCK with the iPhone.
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Maris,
It sounds like you did everything right. And it should work. What model is your iPad Pro and year purchased/built? Find that information in Settings > General > About.
Did you restart your iPad Pro after it updated the Camera Connection Kit? If not, perform a restart and then see if the drives now show up. It’s possible that it needed a restart to get those updated settings for the CCK recognized.
If your iPad continues not to work with those drives, send us those model details.
Keep us posted.
Liz
Mariano says
I download and install the new ipados trusting apple anouncment that new OS will support usb thumb drives. I connected my lighting Verbatin pendrive and nothing happened in files app.
The drive is working fine because the app store and go can detect correctly the drive.
In Apple ipados doesnt work. No explanation nor support fron Apple. Very dissappinted.
Regards
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Mariano,
It’s likely that you need to add power for that external drive to work. The only iPad that seems to support (some) thumb drives without additional power is the iPad Pro 2018 USB-C model.
We suggest you invest in Apple’s Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter that has a USB port and a lightning port to plug power into when you connect a thumb drive. Although some third-party products work, most don’t supply power to the drive. So it’s best to stick with the Apple-branded adapter.
If you don’t want to invest in that right now, visit a nearby Apple Store and ask them if you can try it out to make sure it works with your iPad and thumb drive.
Liz
Martin says
I have a 5th generation iPad and have been trying unsuccessfully to connect a Sandisk Extreme SSD.
I am using a recently purchased camera adaptor with power supplied to it, either using a standard iPad charger or an Anker 5 port USB charger. The camera adaptor did get the firmware upgrade when I first used it.
I have connected the SSD directly to the camera adaptor and also through a USB hub (not mains powered).
There are no error messages but the SSD never appears in the Files browser.
As a test, I connected to a friends iPad Pro USB C port. The SSD appeared instantly.
So, I’m guessing that is a problem getting sufficient power to the SSD.
Any comments or ideas?
Alex Leu says
I have iPad mini 5th generation updated to IpadOS today.
It doesn’t read SanDisk 2TB SSD drive through the Apple Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter with a 10W iPad power supplier.
But iPad mini 5th + lightning adapter can read thumb drive, XQD card reader, and 8T SEAGATE Backup Plus Hub.
I also did the home folder DCIM, then create a subfolder to 100APPLE. Still, no external drive show up on the Location on the fills app.
It looks like Apple still has some more work need to do for their files app.
Ralf Mardorf says
Hi,
I successfully tested an Apple iPad Pro 12.9-inch, 3rd generation, 1TB, Wi-Fi, with a Toshiba disk, in a fantec DB-ALU3e enclosure, that is powered by its own power supply, formatted by a Linux computer and connected with the iPad Pro by an Apple USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter, while the charging cable wasn’t connected.
Some CLI information about the iPad Pro and the USB drive, when connected with the Linux PC:
[[email protected] ~]$ ideviceinfo -u $(idevice_id -l)|grep -eClass -eModelN -eProductV|sed ‘s/ProductVersion/iPadOS/’
DeviceClass: iPad
ModelNumber: MTFR2
iPadOS: 13.1
[[email protected] ~]$ sudo smartctl -i /dev/sdf|grep Fam
Model Family: Toshiba P300
[[email protected] ~]$ lsblk -oTYPE,NAME,PTTYPE,TRAN,VENDOR,MODEL|grep -eN -edf\
TYPE NAME PTTYPE TRAN VENDOR MODEL
disk sdf dos usb ASMT TOSHIBA_HDWD110
[[email protected] ~]$ lsblk -oTYPE,NAME,FSTYPE,LABEL,SIZE,FSUSED,FSAVAIL,FSUSE%,PARTFLAGS|grep -eN -edf
TYPE NAME FSTYPE LABEL SIZE FSUSED FSAVAIL FSUSE% PARTFLAGS
disk sdf 931.5G
part ├─sdf1 ext4 u4.fantec 622.3G 287G 293.4G 47%
part ├─sdf2 vfat u4.fat32 103.3G 32K 103.3G 0%
part ├─sdf3 exfat u4.exfat 103.4G 3.8M 103.4G 0%
part └─sdf4 hfsplus u4.hfs 102.6G 195.2M 102.4G 0%
That’s what I tested, when the USB drive was connected to the iPad Pro:
After opening the File app and selecting “Browse” the “Location” widget does not show the ext4 partition, but it shows the fat32, exfat and hfs+ partitions, all by their label. Using lower case and a dot for the label of a fat32 partition might not work with Windows, but it does for Linux and iPadOS.
For testing purpose I selected “On My iPad” > “Auria Pro”, the folder of a DAW app and then selected an audio project, chose “More” > “Copy” > “u4.fat32” > “Paste”. No issue at all, so I continued by selecting “On My iPad” > “Auria Pro”, selecting the same project, followed by “Move” to “u4.exfat”, then creating a new folder and chose “Copy”. This worked, too. At next I opened the Photos app, selected 2 photos, chose “Save to Files” > “u4.hfs” and “Save”. It worked like a charm as well.
When finished I connected the drive to the Linux PC again, to take a look at the partitions:
[[email protected] ~]$ ls -hAl /mnt/u4.{fat32,exfat/testfolder,hfs}
/mnt/u4.exfat/testfolder:
total 256K
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4.0K Sep 26 07:31 ‘._monomatch freeze.Project’
drwxrwxrwx 1 root root 128K Sep 26 07:31 ‘monomatch freeze.Project’
/mnt/u4.fat32:
total 96K
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 32K Sep 26 10:58 .Spotlight-V100
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4.0K Sep 26 11:20 ‘._monomatch freeze.Project’
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 32K Sep 16 23:54 ‘monomatch freeze.Project’
/mnt/u4.hfs:
total 5.7M
dr-xr-xr-t 1 root root 2 Sep 26 03:28 ‘.HFS+ Private Directory Data’$’\r’
drwx—— 1 501 501 4 Sep 26 10:58 .Spotlight-V100
-rw-r–r– 1 501 501 2.6M Sep 26 11:42 IMG_3100.HEIC
-rw-r–r– 1 501 501 3.2M Sep 26 11:42 IMG_3101.HEIC
The hidden folders and hidden files were created by iPadOS.
By this kind of file transfer, the HEIC pictures aren’t automatically converted to a more common file format.
On Linux, it’s possible to convert the pictures by command line. Users who aren’t comfortable with command line, maybe those who migrated from Windows to Linux, could use the cross-platform image editor GIMP. Most of the partitioning could be done without command line, using GParted.
It can create the partition table, hfs+ partitions with a label and fat32 partitions with a label.
Btw. if you try to name a fat32 partition “u4.fat32” with GParted, it automatically names it “U4FAT32”. I named it by command line, with root privileges running “fatlabel /dev/sdXY LABEL”.
GParted can’t create an exfat partition, but it can create an unformatted partition. An unformatted partition can be formatted to exfat by command line, by running “mkfs.exfat -nLABEL /dev/sdXY” with root privileges.
Regards,
Ralf
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Ralf,
Thank you for sharing with us and our readers your thorough testing of using different formats on external drives when using iPadOS and the Files app!
Awesome information.
Liz
Stéphane English says
What a disappointment! I’ve just tried four different USB memory sticks (including quality, branded Sony and Sandisk drives and a USB 2.0 device) with a powered USB adaptor (camera connection kit, but not an Apple branded one) and all of them have returned the message “this accessory requires too much power”. I even made sure that the powered adaptor was charging the iPad first. I’m using a 2017 iPad Pro 9.7”, for this.
I’ve heard rumours that USB adaptors from 3rd party manufacturers (this one was bought on eBay) are sometimes not fully compatible but, before I go to the expense of an Apple-branded adaptor, I’d like to be sure that I’ll get a better result from doing that. What are other people’s experiences?
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Stephanie,
We’ve heard from several users that their third-party camera adapters are not providing power to their flash drives–when they switch out for the Apple-branded adapter–their drives get power and work with iOS 13 and iPadOS.
I just ran a test with my iPhone XR and a Kingston thumb drive–with third-party, it showed the not sufficient power message but with the Apple-branded adapter, it showed up in the files app!
We suggest you try borrowing someone else’s adapter or visit an Apple Store and ask them to try it out to make sure it works before purchasing.
Liz
NW says
I’m running iPadOS 13.1 on a 9.7 iPad Pro.
Was hoping this feature would let me stick a load of purchased downloaded iTunes tv episodes onto an sd card and travel with it. However whilst the card shows up, and the movie file shows up in Files, I can’t open it. It’s 2GB (game of thrones episode 1) – is it too big?
Geo Ginrosge says
I just download Ipados on my Ipad Pro 2018 model and all my USB thumb drives work using an Anker USB-C to usb3 connector.
However, I cannot see my Seagate external drive in the files app.
The light on the Seagate external drive lights up but the drive itself doesn’t show up on the iPad? I would appreciate any help possible. Maybe is not yet compatible with Ipados?
Thank You
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Geo,
What format is that Seagate drive? iPadOS is not compatible with NTFS. You may need to reformat the drive to a compatible format like exFAT.
If that’s not the issue, make sure the drive has its own power source–a restart might also help your iPad see this drive.
paul forgette says
I’m having exactly that problem with my seahate 8tb , it is powered and formatted to exfat
Gonzalo says
Hi! I have just updated my iPad Pro to iPadOS and tried to plug my Verbatim Store n Go (the one that comes with both USB A and Lightning connectors) and it is not picked up by the Files app. Nevertheless, I can use the drive with Verbatim’s app as I have been doing since I bought it, but I get no native support for it on the Files app (and no error messages either).
Elizabeth Jones says
HI Gonzalo,
Yes, we’ve seen a few similar reports of lightning drives recognized by their third-party apps but not the files app.
And it’s not clear why this is…
Gonzalo says
Thanks for your reply, Elizabeth. It’s indeed very strange, and I can’t also seem to be able to open two instances of Pages or Numbers… I’m really disappointed with this iPadOS thing
Robert Latterman says
Using the initial release of ios13.
First of all, it would NOT let me update to ios13.1 directly on my phone over cellular (as promised) ….
I actually downloaded the ISPW files from a site this morning… VERY large… onto my iPhone 6S Plus and using the new Files app download feature I transferred the files to a flash drive… its VERY slow for large files.
At first I tried my 1tb portable drive – it seemed to power up ok (I have the apple adapter with power) ….. it was taking forever to show up on the list so I gave up…. but I think it was due to the fact that the drive was so large and iOS13 takes a while to read things…..
I’m going to transfer the update to my Mac and use iTunes to do the update from the saved files using the Option key and Restore selection from iTunes….. pretty happy we can FINALLY do this stuff on iOS….. it been wayyyyy too long !!!! 🙂 …. GREAT article….. thanks
Wayne says
Hi.
I’m interested in recording high-quality video directly to external drives through the lightning port on SE or a WiFi drive.
Currently, when you record with external flash it saves it in internal memory first until you press stop, then it copies it out to external memory.
As some of these recording techniques can be 150 to 600mbit/s, so you can’t film too long at high quality.
So, if you are filming a concert or sporting event, you run out of phone memory quickly.
Can the new system bypass the local storage to record directly to any external memory without pressing stop?
I’m looking at buying a SE.
Could anybody try?
Thank you.
Jan says
Thanks for the detailed article.
Several questions:
– can you see how much space is left on a drive?
– do you get specific info about e.g a folder: how many files, how many KB are contained in it?
– can you see how large a file is?
– do you see transfering speeds?
– is the USB-C connection on the Ipad 5gbs or 10gbs (usb 3.1 gen 2)
Thanks for the info.
Elizabeth Jones says
HI Jan,
Thanks for asking additional questions.
1) We could not see how much space remains on an external drive using the Files app…there doesn’t seem to be a way, at least that we can find
2) We could also not see the size of a folder or how many items it contained without opening up that folder to see what’s in it
3) We could see the information about a single file–showing how large that file is by selecting the icon or list view. You can also tap and hold an item to open the File App’s Quick Action menu and choose info to get information on file type/kind, size, date created, date modified, and other pertinent information on that specific file
4) We could not see any specific information about the transfer speeds in our testing
5) The port on the iPad is a USB-c 3.1 Gen 2 that can support a maximum of 10 gigabits per second. However, to get those speeds you need to use a separate USB-C to USB-C cable that’s compliant to USB 3.0, USB 3.1 or Thunderbolt standards to get the 5-10 Gbps data transfer speeds. The cable that Apple includes with the iPad cable isn’t any faster than a lightning cable (USB 2.0.)
Hope that helps and if you find any updated information, like viewing transfer speeds let us know!
Cheers,
Liz
D Chrisotpher says
Issue of connecting a regular USB thumb drive to iPhone 8 with IOS 13, using the files app. I received an error that “there is not enough power for this device”.
Old school work-around:
Connect a non-powered USB HUB to the iPhone’s lightning connector with an adapter cable
Connect a USB thumb drive to USB Hub
USB drive is recognized, with no power issues
Able to browse all files on thumb drive
Hailey says
I tried all of this and still nothing is working. Though the error messages goes away with the USB hub, which is a start. And my regular USB stick works just fine. Any ideas? Thanks
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Hailey,
Does your hub have its own power source? Try restarting your iPhone/iPad, then plug the external drive into a powered hub and see if this works for you. Or plug power into the camera adapter and see if the hub will power your drive that way.
Most external drive issues are due to lack of power or trying to use an NTFS or another unsupported format.
fastoy says
I’m running iPadOS Beta 7 on iPad 6 (2018).
I have a 128GB Lightning USB drive.
I’ve tried all the suggestions to make it visible in Files. It was formatted with exFAT.
When that didn’t work I created folders DCIM and 100APPLE and that didn’t work.
Then I formatted with FAT32. When that didn’t work I created folders DCIM and 100APPLE and that didn’t work.
I’m also unable to get SMBs to work.
I have a Drobo 5N and a Windows 10 shared.
These are accessible by ALL other systems with no password required. I can even access these SMB shares with “Remote Files” app.
Suggestions?
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Fastoy,
For the lightning USB drive, it may be a power issue–I know this sounds nuts since the drive was designed for the iPad. But we’ve seen reports that these older iPhone/iPad designed drives aren’t working like they used to in iOS 12 and below.
If you happen to have one of those Apple’s USB 3 Camera Dongles (or can borrow one), see if that works. Plug your drive into the USB port and a lightning power cable into the other port, then attach to your iPad. See if that does the trick.
For the SMB, a few users find that this is broken again in beta 7. But try the following:
Open the files app
Tap the top three-dot (ellipsis) button
Choose Connect to Server
Type in SMB://Enter in the NAME or IP address (some folks find it works with adding .local at the end while others find it works when not adding it–so try both ways)
Tap Next
Enter your login information
If it doesn’t work try turning off any VPN, if you have one enabled.
Liz
fastoy says
Wow! Thanks for the tip on “.local” for SMB. That made the Drobo show up. The Windows 10 SMB share gives “Invalid argument” when I specify it exactly the same as the Drobo.
The Lightning drive I have is just a USB thumb drive with both a Lightning connector and USB connector. It works fine using the proprietary app and with “Remote Files” app so I don’t think it’s a power issue.
Using the Drobo SMB I was able to “Download” a video and it shows in “On My iPad”. I was hoping that I could get the video to be visible in the “TV” app. Is there another step I need to perform?
Elizabeth Jones says
I’ll look more into the invalid argument for Windows 10 SMB.
As far as the lightning drive, some folks and friends report similar issues with the Files app and their lightning drives (that they used successfully in earlier iOS versions). Once they plugged those into that camera adapter and plugged the adapter into power–the drive showed up!
If you have one of those adapters available or can borrow one, just give it a try and see if it shows up in the Files app. I wouldn’t buy anything new–because it does currently work for you with remote files and the manufacturer’s app–and we don’t know for sure if giving it power would indeed help.
Now, regarding movies and the TV app–our writer Andy is testing this out and working on an article right now. I know a lot of people want this same functionality to see their videos in the TV App–I haven’t been able to get this to work myself. But I know Andy is spending a lot more time on testing. So hopefully, he’ll discover some additional tips. So stay tuned.
Keep me posted if you find some workarounds and I’ll do the same,
Liz
fastoy says
Thanks. You have been so much help. I can live with the Drobo SMB access but the Lightning USB drive would be great! I don’t have the “Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter” and don’t know anyone to borrow one from. I think it’s odd that other apps can see/access the drive but “Files” can’t.
Similarly I can live with using the “Files” app to see/play the media I’ve copied to “On My iPad” but it’s awkward and doesn’t seem to meet the hype of iPadOS 13.
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Ben,
Hopefully, these types of bugs get worked on in the coming few weeks before the public release.
Consider adding your feedback using the feedback app that all beta versions offer. Apple developers do get this feedback directly–and they look into this data the most when an iOS is in its beta version.
And of course, we’ll keep testing and researching ourselves.
Liz
Dimas Oliveira says
I am trying hard to use my iPad air 3 with IPADOS13 beta 6, BUT every time I’ve tried to copy 5Gb of jpgs from my Ipad to an external disk (which works on my Ipad) I get some error…. so I have to upload it to my NAS…
* I don’t believe it’s a HD error, I’ve tried on 3 different HD’s
* I think it’s something with the code, since I can read and edit but I cannot save multiple files at once.
IT”S TERRIBLE SLOW!!!! Like…. SLOW… TERRIBLE SLOW… 2.1Gb took me 11 minutes…
Please tell me what I am doing wrong.
* IpadOS13 Beta 6
* Expensive USB3-lightning adapter
* Seagate usb 4.0 1TB formated on ExFat
* Files app copying and pasting using just one window
* Nothing else running.
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Dimas,
We don’t think you are doing anything wrong. What we recommend trying is to copy that 5GB in sections–like try 1 GB or 500 MB groupings–then see if performance improves.
Although the iPad (and iPhone too) does support external drives, it’s performance isn’t going to mirror our Macs or computers–iPads just don’t have the same processing speed and efficiencies. At least, not yet.
We also highly encourage you to submit a bug report using the feedback app.
Sebastián Véjar says
Hi, I’ve been trying to connect my WD Passport 2TB external to my iPad Pro 2018 but nothing makes it works.
Already tried to use the DCIM and 100APPLE trick but it doesn’t work either.
Elizabeth Jones says
Hi Sebastian,
What format is the WD Passport drive?
If you can move info off the drive to temporarily store it elsewhere, some folks had success reformating their external drives, placing the data back on it, and then connecting to the iPad.
Hope this works for you!
Liz
Hailey says
Is your device encrypted? I believe this is my issue, and I have the same external hard drive as yours.