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iPad Pro iPadOS + external drive - Files app bugged

S

shm

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 3, 2017
24
14
Poland
iPadOS 13.1.1 + iPad pro 2018

Files app seems broken:

1. Copy errors
it does not seem to be able to copy large files or folders from (or to) external drives.
The copied item is "grayed out" with progress indicator seemingly stuck.

Attempts to copy large numbers of small (100 files - about 20-30 MB each) files from an SD card result in app crashes.

2. disapperaing folder/file icons
When I leave current directory during file transfer, the transferred item disappears from the screen completely.
Upon reconnecting the drive - for copying files TO the drive - I managed to get to a partially copied file, which was supposed to be 4GB, but it seems there was only a part of it containing about 600MB, which took about 8 mins to copy from the iPAD... this is pretty bad.

Upon restarting iOS, the copied folders become visible, but without contents.

3. Progress bar (circle, actually) invisible or not working
Progress bar for file/folder copy process disappeard completely in 13.1.1 - when one leaves the current directory and gets back to it, the copy progress indicator appears again.

in 13.1.0 it was just incorrectly reporting the progress.

4. Slow transfer speed
Finally, when a file is copied to an external drive/card after all, the speed is around an abysmal 7 MB/s ...


Checked a few different drives: HDD, SSD, pen drives, sd cards, with different cable combinations
disks, ssd, cards and cables all checked before - all work flawlessly on a macbook. Also checked APFS, FAT (sd card), MacOS Extended

Is anyone experienceing similar problems?
I've seen a thread about slow transfer speed but this seems like a whole new level of disaster.

Frankly - this feels worse than a windows Vista... Copying files is BASIC functionality and if they couldn't get it right during 3 months of beta testing, I'm really not confident to use the iPad P.R.O. for anything other than casual web browsing. Btw - the files app seemed buggy in the betas but the later betas at least seemed to have been able to copy files with the same hardware.
 
sparksd said:
I found these issues -

forums.macrumors.com

Files can't deal with videos > 4.5GB on external storage

Using 2018 iPad Pro with 13.1. I've found that with mp4's greater than around 4.5GB on external storage that the Files app can't play the video itself nor does it share it well with other video apps (nPlayer, Infuse, VLC). If under 4.5GB, Files can play the video and share it correctly. Video...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com
Click to expand...
It's a bug? Glad I'm not the only one with this problem.
 
sparksd said:
No changes to it in 13.1.2 that I can tell.
Click to expand...
Well, now the whole system crashes and iPad restarts about 10 seconds after attaching external ssd (samsung 850 sata drive, formatted to APFS)...

changing the view mode now brings the transfer progress indicator back (but still inaccurate)

On the bright side - transfer speeds from the external drive to the iPad (if no system crash occurs) are at levels one could expect from USB3 80-90 MB/s, but still nowhere near the peak I observed in betas...
 
shm said:
Well, now the whole system crashes and iPad restarts about 10 seconds after attaching external ssd (samsung 850 sata drive, formatted to APFS)...

changing the view mode now brings the transfer progress indicator back (but still inaccurate)

On the bright side - transfer speeds from the external drive to the iPad (if no system crash occurs) are at levels one could expect from USB3 80-90 MB/s, but still nowhere near the peak I observed in betas...
Click to expand...

I attached a Samsung 500GB T-5 SSD formatted exFAT and copied a 5GB mp4 from it to the Files folder for nPlayer. The copy happened and was much faster than before but the file was not playable in nPlayer. So, fast but useless.
 
in another development - it appears that when I leave an ssd drive (APFS) attached to an iPad Pro 2018 for a while (sth like 15 mins with it on all the time), file transfer speeds seem to improve!

The only explanation I can come up with for this is that the files app is running a search engine to tag file names/directories or some iOS equivalent to MacOS spotlight, which exhibits simlar effects...

Could not reproduce the effect for exFAT sd cards, though.

What a mess...
 
Australianapplefan said:
hey everyone can you copy songs straight from the music app to an external ssd in ipados
Click to expand...

I do not know of any straightforward way.
I seem to have the option to "save file to dropbox" for the files I synced from iTunes, and "share" for itunes content, but clicking either of these returns an "unknown error" message...
 
sparksd said:
I attached a Samsung 500GB T-5 SSD formatted exFAT and copied a 5GB mp4 from it to the Files folder for nPlayer. The copy happened and was much faster than before but the file was not playable in nPlayer. So, fast but useless.
Click to expand...

I managed to get an 2TB external drive (formatted to exFAT using MacOS):

Case 1 - copy to drive from iPad:
Files app reports copy process still going after the activity light on the enclosure stops blinking, then Files app hangs and fails to recognize the drive. Restart required to see the drive again.
Oddly enough, the file transferred correctly as I was able to read it on MacOS (not on iPad, though).

Case 2 - copy from drive to iPad:
8gig video file copies without major issues.
Video playback from the drive possible but with a lot of dropped frames.
 
shm said:
I managed to get an 2TB external drive (formatted to exFAT using MacOS):

Case 1 - copy to drive from iPad:
Files app reports copy process still going after the activity light on the enclosure stops blinking, then Files app hangs and fails to recognize the drive. Restart required to see the drive again.
Oddly enough, the file transferred correctly as I was able to read it on MacOS (not on iPad, though).

Case 2 - copy from drive to iPad:
8gig video file copies without major issues.
Video playback from the drive possible but with a lot of dropped frames.
Click to expand...

My takeaway from all of this is that Files is - to be polite - an "immature product".
 
I've had a chance to attach a USB pendrive (sandisk extreme) to a demo version of iPad Pro via Apple USB-c dongle.

So the demo OS does not seem to show the visual glitches I get on my two iPads (pro and 5th gen) when copying files - so the transfer progress circle is visible and files do not disappear. However, the slow speed when copying files FROM iPad to USB device is still present (ballpark of 10 megabytes per second)

Called Apple support - they suggested checking if a clean install of iPadOS helps
and then waiting for another OS update...

Clean install for iPad (5th gen) did not resolve any issues I experienced, unfortunately. I guess I'll wait till the next OS update and then do a clean install for all iOS devices.

Again - I'm really disappointed.
Reliably copying files in a fast manner is basic functionality, after all. Apple advertises this as a machine for professional work, and a laptop replacement. Yet right now virtuall every Android phone with USB-C and every entry level windows tablet-y device equipped with USB3 beats the iPad hands down on this.

... It's not like copying files is a revolutionary, cutting edge feature which requires some polishing before prime time in the IT world, is it? One would consider it generally "figured out" by now.
 
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