USB Storage with iOS 13: The FAQ

I’m also able to write to my USB flash drive that I tested, on am iPad Mini 4, using Apple’s lightning to USB3 camera adapter. The flash drive I tested is formatted FAT32.

It’s just MS-DOS (FAT). This is a card from a Canon point-and-shoot camera that I haven’t used in years.

Thanks, Adam.

Ron

Thank you, I’ll keep trying different ideas, although it really should not be this difficult.

Ron

Has anyone tried connecting a bus-powered USB drive to an iPhone or iPad running iOS 13 using Apple’s Lighting to USB 3 Camera Adapter, with passthrough power provided? I only have two bus-powered drives, and since they’re both used for Time Machine backups and are encrypted, they won’t mount in iOS 13. But I don’t know if they won’t mount because of the encryption or because of insufficient power. A powered USB drive I have around mounts fine, but it also isn’t encrypted.

I’ve tried two drives - a lot of flashing of the light on the drive, but neither mounted. One I discovered was formatted NTFS, so I tried another which I deliberately reformatted to HFS+ with a GUID partition table - no dice. This is with a 12w charger - I don’t have anything more powerful.

Thanks, that’s what I feared. I got roughly similar flashing lights, but couldn’t eliminate the encryption.

As mentioned by Josh under “Lightning Options”, I was thinking of buying the Apple USB-C to Lightning adapter that includes a USB-A port ( https://www.apple.com/au/shop/reviews/MK0W2AM/A/lightning-to-usb-3-camera-adapter ) but reading the reviews it seems that there are power issues, even when the adapter being powered by a USB-C cable.
“In theory, iOS 13 allows the Files app to read files from thumb drives (usb drives). In practice - when you connect one to this - even if it is plugged in to a lightning port for power, you just get the message ‘this accessory requires too much power’ The only workaround I have found is to connect a powered usb hub to this adaptor, then connect the thumb drive to that powered hub.”

Another reviewer reports that the adapter is useless for watching video on a thumb drive because it is way too slow.

The frustrating thing is that iShowFast had this all sorted out years ago - I can plug their special thumb drive straight into my iPad Air2 Lightning port and watch videos.

I think it’s safe to say that providing power via the passthrough Lightning port is necessary for some devices, but not necessarily sufficient for all devices, and then a powered hub would be the answer.

Hi there,

I‘m still searching for a solution to show the properties of a USB drive, e.g. free disk space, systm format, size, etc…

Anyone have a solution for that?

Thanks, Peter

Josh, thanks for your great USB Storage article. Here is a related article on glitches when using exFAT with iOS 13. (iOS unmount/eject temporarily prevents remounting.) Possibly this was fixed in later releases or 14, 15 ?

From June 2020.

Regards, William Croft

I have a related question. I just copied many folders on my iMac to an SSD formatted as MacOS Extended (Journaled). I can connect this SSD to my (very old) iPad and read all the files but when I connect it to my iPhone 6S the Files app doesn’t see it. Is this a power issue? All devices are on the current release of software.