Seagate Satellite or PQI AirDrive?

[mac maniac]

I travel a lot with work and bought a ipad2 last month to replace my old MacBook. To be fair it's been great and done the job (office docs, email, games, web & movies....downloading music & de-compressing movies aside its practically replaced my macbook!!!!) but as its only a 16gb I still need to cart my MacBook with me plus the 3 or 4 external hard drives to get movies/tv shows onto the iPad with the app AV Player HD which requires a wifi network (great app)

I've been looking at some wifi hard drives and these pair below look promising although the Seagate seems to have poor software but decent 500gb memory vs carrying loads of 32gb SD cards!

Seagate goflex Satellite 500gb
http://www.maplin.co.uk/500gb-seaga...mpaign=B98NL&utm_content=Wireless+Hard+Drives

PQI Air Drive
http://www.maplin.co.uk/pqi-air-drive-wireless-wifi-mobile-storage-626400

I've read that the seagate creates its own wifi to transfer files, which app would I need for that? Will AV Player HD work the same as before and just search for the files from the hard drive or is there a dedicated app for that?

How does the PQI work? Does that create its own wifi or does it need to connect to a router? (I've no wifi in work 90% the time) Not much info on it but it looks pretty good on YouTube
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZocvIvvf7M8

What's everyone's thoughts/experience of these? One other thing! Can you save the movies onto the iPad instead of having them playing via wifi?

Cheers Dave

 

[mac maniac]

Anybody?

 

[bobcat56458]

I have a Seagate Goflex Satellite and it’s a device that suffers from poor firmware. The hard drive itself is fine, but Seagate has done a poor job with the way it indexes the files (movies/music) that are stored on the device. I have thousands of music videos stored on the hard drive and with their firmware it took 20 minutes before it would show my titles because it was re-indexing the hard drive contents each and every time I turned it on. I was ready to write this device off until I found an alternative firmware at www.hackseagatesatellite.com With this I’m able to use any DNLA enabled iPod/iPad app like PowerPlayer, or GoodPlayer, to access files on the hard drive as soon as I connect to it with WiFi. Now this may be more than a casual user may want to go through if they are only storing several movies on the hard drive. But bare in mind that this is a 500GB hard drive, and you may want to store hundreds, or thousands of files on it. This firmware itself is not cheap, about $35.00 US. This is on top of the cost of the Seagate Goflex Satellite about $200.00, and the needed app’s to make it all work. I guess these are the hoops one must jump through to have the ability to bring all your media with you.

 

[Medic311]

just buy a pogoplug and leave your hard drives at home.

as long as you have a wifi connection, you can stream your movie from your pogoplug

 

[bobcat56458]

Hi Medic311, Yes these cloud services are an alternative to be considered. I use an app called StreamToMe when I’m connected to my local network, and it works well. This same app will also work over WiFi, but the problem I find is that you are at the mercy of the download speed of whatever hotspot you are connecting to for WiFi. Many times you are using a connection that is being accessed by others trying to do the same thing as you (watching video). This brings us to the much dreaded buffering no one likes when watching a video. This will happen when watching a standard definition video, not to mention a high definition one. And, then there are the times that no WiFi is available, like when you are driving down the highway and the kids want to watch a movie. I’d say bring that portable hard drive with you, and not be at the mercy someone’s slow WiFi hotspot.

 

[mac maniac]

I have a Seagate Goflex Satellite and it’s a device that suffers from poor firmware. The hard drive itself is fine, but Seagate has done a poor job with the way it indexes the files (movies/music) that are stored on the device. I have thousands of music videos stored on the hard drive and with their firmware it took 20 minutes before it would show my titles because it was re-indexing the hard drive contents each and every time I turned it on. I was ready to write this device off until I found an alternative firmware at www.hackseagatesatellite.com With this I’m able to use any DNLA enabled iPod/iPad app like PowerPlayer, or GoodPlayer, to access files on the hard drive as soon as I connect to it with WiFi. Now this may be more than a casual user may want to go through if they are only storing several movies on the hard drive. But bare in mind that this is a 500GB hard drive, and you may want to store hundreds, or thousands of files on it. This firmware itself is not cheap, about $35.00 US. This is on top of the cost of the Seagate Goflex Satellite about $200.00, and the needed app’s to make it all work. I guess these are the hoops one must jump through to have the ability to bring all your media with you.

Thanks for the reply, I'll look into it a little more before getting one. Sounds like a right pita but I need to get something.

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just buy a pogoplug and leave your hard drives at home.

as long as you have a wifi connection, you can stream your movie from your pogoplug

No good for me I'm afraid. I need something that creates its own wifi network.

Has anyone used the PQI air drive yet?

 

[ActionableMango]

There is also the Maxell Airstash and Kingston Wi-Drive. Just to throw out some other options you might not know about.

 

[mac maniac]

There is also the Maxell Airstash and Kingston Wi-Drive. Just to throw out some other options you might not know about.

Cheers I'll take a look now.