Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
Years ago, I experimented with reading flash drives on an iPad. I had a special cable. I haven't tried it in a long time, so I can't really talk about speeds. At the time is seemed to be one of those possible but not particularly useful things at least not useful for me.
Is there a particular reason you want to use a USB drive rather than a network drive like iCloud or dropbox?
|
First, pardon the long winded explanation below. Short version, I want to know what can be realistically expected for transfer speeds between external USB memory devices and the iPad Air 2020 and the last two years of iPad pro models. There is a lot of unrealistic hype associated with transfer speeds and I want to cut through a ll of that.
Much longer version...
The reasons are photography and convenience. I'm not going to pay to store my photos, many of which are Photoshop files that exceed 200MB, on iCloud, or any cloud. I don't care for Dropbox either. I do a lot of photography away from the house as a hobby and if I’m out and about it is nice to use a USB memory device. For one thing, I never buy an iPad with cellular capability, which means I would have to be home with WiFi or I would have to use my iPhone XR as a hotspot.
However, one of the BIG selling points of the recent iPad Pro models and iPad Air 2020 is that Apple has finally allowed for faster file transfers to/from them without having to jump through hoops. For videographers and photographers this is a capability they have long requested. So now that the last few model years have allowed this at higher than USB 2.0 speeds, there is a lot of buzz over what works best. There is also a lot of confusion. For example, the iPad might be capable of up to 625MB/s transfer speeds, or even 1250MB/s, but you won't likely ever approach that speed with external USB memory drives. People are paying a king's ransom for the higher end iPads these days in order to use them as a powerful computing tools rather than to just watch Youtube videos, surf the internet, check out social media sites, etc. I bought my iPad Air 2020 to use as a tool for my photography hobby, and therefore I am interested in what its capabilities really are. The iPad Pros are even more powerful and expensive, but knowing their capabilities is certainly important to prospective buyers who are contemplating putting down as much for one as they would have spent on a laptop.
Apple, like all tech companies, likes to paint a powerful image of their iPads as laptop replacements, but it is often difficult to see past the rhetoric and find truly useful data. Manufacturers of SSDs, flash/thumb drives, SD cards, and other memory types are the same. They love to use those "up to" speeds, but they are mostly blowing smoke up our backsides. Yes, a USB 3.1 gen 2 drive theoretically can transfer data "up to" 10,000Gbs (1250MB/s), but what speeds can the user realistically expect to get when it is connected to an iPad? Most of the reviews focus on the theoretical "up to" speeds but never show actual real world speeds.
I want to know the real world speeds. For example, I want to know if a USB 3.1 gen 1 flash drive connected to an iPad Air 2020 which has a USB 3.0 port, both of which can theoretically transfer data at 625MB/s, actually get anywhere close to that speed, or only perform at a small fraction of it.
The problem with internet reviews is that most of the reviewers don’t understand the tech aspect enough to adequately provide a realistic review. For example, buyers of flash drives might give a USB-C USB 3.1 gen 1 flash drive a single star and bitch because it only provides 60MB/s READ and 10MB/s WRITE speeds when connected to their iPad. Their rationale is the drive was rated at "up to" 625MB/s but it only provides about 1/10th of that speed for WRITE and less than that for READ. But what port speed is their iPad capable of? If it is an older USB 2.0 port, then it is limited to only 60MB/s, which explains the slower speeds. If their iPad has a USB 3.0 (or USB 3.1 gen 1) port, then it is capable of 625MB/s, but will it really deliver that speed with a flash drive connected? Probably not. And it isn't just reviews from buyers that tend to be of little value, most of the tech magazine reviewers seem to lack a decent understanding of file transfer tech, and they just harp on the "up to" speeds like they were realistic. I'm trying to cut through all the useless and unrealistic garbage in the reviews and discover what we can realistically expect for transfer speeds.