You can connect the USB flash drive to other devices or computers through Type A plug. The USB flash drive is designed typically smaller as compared to HDD, Optical disk, and other typical storage devices due to flexibility and portability. Tips on Computer Backup to Flash DriveĪ USB Flash drive is a small portable storage device used to store and read data like photos, videos, documents, audio, archive, etc. How to Backup Computer to Flash Drive in Windows It's really too bad that, for now, you can't use it to bring large movies with you, but if you want to carry a few seasons of TV shows or extra books/music/podcasts for a long fight or a road trip, this is by far the best accessory you can get for your Lightning-based iPhone or iPad. The fact that it also works as a convenient backup device for your user-generated content adds that much more to its value. While not perfect, the iXpand Flash Drive is one of the best storage accessories for the iPad I've seen, thanks to its ease of use and stellar media playback performance. Or maybe it will come with an SD card slot. Hopefully, the new version of the iXpand will have 128GB or even more. Other full size storage expanders can offer up to 2TB. At this speed, it'd take an hour and a half to fill up 64GB of storage.įinally, its top capacity of 64GB is comparatively quite limited. This is about half the typical performance of a USB 2.0 portable drive. In my testing, as a flash drive connected to a computer, it registered the copy speed at just 12MBps for writing. The second shortcoming of the iXpand is the fact that it doesn't support USB 3.0. SanDisk says it's contemplating the issue and, depending on user demand, might consider making the iXpand Sync app support exFAT in the future. Since most feature-length HD movies require more than 4GB to store in a digital format, there are many movies you can't bring with you using the iXpand. However, it can hold single files of just 4GB or less. In order for it to work with the iXpand Sync app, you'll need to format it using FAT32.įAT32 is a common file system for thumbdrives and is fully supported by both Windows and Mac. You can format the drive into any of these file systems, but then it works only as a regular thumbdrive. A few shortcomingsĪs much as I like the iXpand the way it is, I wish it supported other file systems, such as NTFS, NFS+ or exFAT. Restoring contacts takes the same amount of time. I tried backing up some 2,000 contacts, which took just 2 seconds. On top of that, you can also back up your contacts to the iXpand. In my trial, the movie took just slightly longer (about half a second) to start during a sync. In my trial, after three days of casual use with just an iPad, the device's battery still showed as full.ĭuring the sync, you can still use the drive for other functions, such as playing a movie. SanDisk says that the battery, which charges itself when you connect the drive to a computer, has enough juice to power the iXpand for days on end of usage. Also impressive is that because the iXpand has its own battery, the drive doesn't affect your iPad's battery life. In all, viewing content stored on the iXpand is as easy and as fast as as viewing content stored locally on the device. Updated on April 20th 2016: After firmware updates, now the drive doesn't support some popular sound encoding methods, including DTS and AC3. I could view and play virtually all types of content with ease. Playback support for other file types, including photos, music and documents is also excellent. The app even supports subtitles, including subtitles embedded within the media file. Most importantly, the iXpand Sync app also supports virtually all video formats that I know of, including the rarely supported Matroska media container (MKV). Also in my testing, there was no connectivity lag at all and I could quickly find anything stored on the drive. After that the app instantly recognizes the drive when you plug it in. On your iPad, you will need to download the iXpand Sync mobile app first. It's preformatted in FAT32 so it will work right away with either a Windows or a Mac computer (just like any thumbdrive). In this case, though, simplicity trumps capacity. Though the iXpand is conveniently small, keeping it that size means the amount of available storage won't be gargantuan. Also, since you're using the Lighting port, you can't charge your iDevice at the same time. The Lightning connector brings a few advantages: it's much faster than going wireless, it's easier to use and much more reliable. In the world of storage expansion for the iPad, the iXpand is the first I've seen that uses the Lightning connector (the rest use Wi-Fi to transfer files). Dong Ngo/CNET Simple yet affective design The iXpand Flash Drive is basically a regular thumbdrive with a Lightning connector.
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