Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iPad Pro How can I add 4TB of space to my iPad? Going away w/no wifi, want to bring movies & books with me.

Turnpike

Turnpike

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 2, 2011
585
326
New York City!
As the title says, I'm going away (hospital stay then travel) for a bit and want to bring my entire iTunes library with me.... TV shows, movies, and a ton of audiobooks and digital books with me, plus a ton of projects that are stored in apps like Scrivener and other screenwriting apps. Some TV series take up a LOT of space, (Mad Men, others...) and I know I won't have wifi or data for a lot of that time (months). Not even wi-fi, so it will be like I'm in Airport Mode.

Just the TV shows I have purchased over the years won't fit in 2TB of space (yep, there's a lot) and I'd like to start downloading as soon as possible.

Is there some extended storage I can buy to plug in to the iPad Pro (2018) to expand the space? I'd like to be able to watch/read whatever I download right on the ipad, in the Apple TV player and Books apps and read things in the screenwriting apps they are stored in. I know I won't actually have time in a full year to go through 4TB of stuff, but I want access to whatever I'm in the mood to watch or work on so I'd like to bring a lot with me. Thanks!
 
Books are easy since those tend to have smaller file size (unless reading comics).

Audiobooks, maybe iffy depending on how many you have and how large your internal storage is.

It’s largely the DRMed videos that will be problematic. Unlike on Mac, purchased movies and TV shows with DRM are limited to internal storage on the iPad. You can’t store them on external drive.

You’ll need to also bring a computer with large HDD to share/stream iTunes purchased stuff to the iPad.

If you download your videos via “unofficial” sources though, you can store them on portable SSD or HDD and use a 3rd party app like Infuse, nPlayer, VLC, etc. to watch.
 
  • Like
Reactions: racerhomie and sparksd
sparksd said:
For movies I have from ripped DVDs, I use a USB-C SSDs and nPlayer to watch directly from the SSD's. I also will use a hub at times and an HDMI cable to stream to a hotel TV.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I redeem digital copies on Movies Anywhere or iTunes but I still rip my movies and series from Blu-ray.

So far, we’ve always brought at least one laptop on longer trips (nowadays, my brother’s gaming laptop). That’s what we connect to the Airbnb TV via HDMI.
 
  • Like
Reactions: sparksd
rui no onna said:
Yeah. I redeem digital copies on Movies Anywhere or iTunes but I still rip my movies and series from Blu-ray.

So far, we’ve always brought at least one laptop on longer trips (nowadays, my brother’s gaming laptop). That’s what we connect to the Airbnb TV via HDMI.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I used to take my laptop on travel but have switched over to my 13" Pro + MKB. I used to take both but realized I didn't need the laptop at all.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Mac mini power user and rui no onna
sparksd said:
Yeah, I used to take my laptop on travel but have switched over to my 13" Pro + MKB. I used to take both but realized I didn't need the laptop at all.
Click to expand...

Can’t play FF7 Rebirth on the iPad. Not sure if it’s available via streaming but internet in the Philippines can be very finicky. The laptop also does double duty as media server for the entire family. :p
 
  • Wow
  • Like
Reactions: _Mitchan1999 and sparksd
A 4TB external SSD should be able to plug into your iPad and work just fine. Not sure about playing media directly off it because a lot of apps don’t access external storage natively, but if you can’t play directly, you can copy the files you want to the iPad to play and then delete them off the iPad’s storage when done.
 
  • Like
Reactions: schnaps and J.J. Sefton
Jman13 said:
A 4TB external SSD should be able to plug into your iPad and work just fine. Not sure about playing media directly off it because a lot of apps don’t access external storage natively, but if you can’t play directly, you can copy the files you want to the iPad to play and then delete them off the iPad’s storage when done.
Click to expand...

I use nPlayer to play directly off the SSD.
 
A lightweight USB-C SSD, thinner and lighter the better, plugged in to your iPad. Even consider a temporary Velcro strip to stick it to the back to avoid it falling and putting strain on the port / cable.

Disable any and all settings that automatically ‘offload’ things from your built in storage so you downloaded content onboard the iPad doesn’t get wiped. Apple’s simplicity can be annoying with these things
 
  • Like
Reactions: schnaps, rui no onna, ignatius345 and 2 others
Assuming you purchased these movies and TV shows through iTunes or that’s the way you want to stream them, that’s not possible unfortunately.
If you have Local DRM free versions you can use an external SSD, but if you’re wanting to get these movies downloaded right from iTunes, unfortunately that is only available with the internal storage.
 
Turnpike said:
plus a ton of projects that are stored in apps like Scrivener and other screenwriting apps.
Click to expand...
This stuff is tiny, so obviously it should be on the iPad's internal storage. The bigger media stuff will end up on an external drive as others have recommended but the writing you're actively working on is difficult/impossible to replace so I wouldn't shunt it off to external storage.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back