WD My Passport Wireless ======================= I have got this external hard drive before some time. In an ideal world it should be unnecessary for me (much simpler solution should be enough). Bud there is no ideal world, you know. My problem is quite simple: I have a digital camera with an USB connector and a a SD card slot (the HP PhotoSmart 735). I also have other (Linux-based) devices with USB connectors and sometimes I need to move data between them. The typical case is an attempt to get pictures from the camera to my tablet in order to see them. Little excursion to the past ---------------------------- I have the PhptoSmart 735 camera from 2004. Actually I got the second one when the original one broke. I tried to use something newer but returned to the old HP. For a long time I used the LinkSys NSLU-2 [1] network storage device to get data from camera to my SGI O2. It is possible to use an USB-SD adapter to connect the card from the camera to the NSLU-2 and the Sharity Lite [2] software on the SGI side to access it (the integrated FTP server in the NSLU-2 is too limited for comfortable use). Of course, there were some issues (some random problems with mounting) and the solution was not the fastest possible. But it worked (it also worked for most of USB sticks: my NSLU-2 has problems with USB harddisks - I never needed them to much so I left this issue unresolved). Please note that the Sharity is an commercial software (and the Lite version is no longer available). I actually recently purchased the current version (it still supports the IRIX and other old good systems!). As IRIX cannot do certain types of remote accesses I had to use a Linux box as a proxy. The NSLU-2 is not very useful for this (its original firmware is too restricted and the box itself s a bit slow for that). So I used a Linux laptop for this task and then replaced it with the Raspberry Pi and now I have an Intel Compute Stick for this use (and also for some Internet-related tasks as the IRIX browser are more and more limited in the modern WWW environment because of speed and compatibility issues). It is obvious that it is senseless to use 2 or 3 devices for similar tasks (any Linux box can mount USB drives and share them with other computers). Thus I stopped to use the NSLU-2 long time ago. Today's problems ---------------- Today, everything has USB ports, a Bluetooth and a WiFi connection so everything has to work easily. But is does not: * one cannot connect USB stick to most portable devices (no such support on the Ubuntu Touch, the Android is slightly better), * even if it is possible then the limitation are so high than it makes the connection almost useless or the where procedure is over complicated * the recommended approach is to store data in the cloud but I do now want to * sell my data to anyone (I often I even don't have an internet access when I need to move the data) Wireless Harddisk ----------------- But I have got an internet-enabled harddisk!? Yes, because it help me in some cases. It is not necessary to connect it to an external WiFi network. It can itself act as an access point and it allows sharing of data by the SMB and the FTP protocols (and other but I even don't know what is the "DLNA server..." so I turned that thing off). It has a SD slot and it can be configured to automatically import the data from the SD to a directory. And it has an internal battery so I can run up to 5 hours without power source (it's a producer's claim - I never had it on for so long time). So it can: * store data from my camera's SD card, * offer all its data to other machines (my Ubuntu phone and tablet, our Android tablet and so) via it's own private WiFi, and it can do it also during traveling (even in a train when the disk lies a a bag and only the tablet is used), it is especially useful for portable devices with limited storage space, * be used as a normal USB external hardisk for data exchange with a normal desktop computer. It is also possible to connect to the harddisk with the SSH. It allows to do some more thing here (it's a normal Linux with somewhat restricted arsenal of tools). Actually, it allows me to carry only a phone and a camera for longer trips (an no laptop nor tablet). Of course I often also have one of my older pocket computers with me (the Palm, the Zaurus or the NanoNote) to be able to do rest of the tasks. And I noticed that the Ubuntu Touch File Manager can be used easily with the disk but it requires the unrestricted version of the file manager (from the OpenStore) as the standard version fails during trying to use SMB. References: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSLU2 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharity