Hard Drive for iPad Pro?

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Dan
Edit My Images
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Going to buy a 12.9" iPad Pro tomorrow

Any recommendations on hard drive?

For processing photographs.
 
It's 1am, I can't sleep and here's what I've found out.

Lightroom Cc will only work off locally stored files.

So each card I use is 128gb, worst case scenario a job can have 200gb of raws. Meaning I would ideally need a 512gb ipad pro £££

To get the changes to my pc lightroom I would need to be able to sync the working files, my 20gb cloud storage won't cut it. So 1Tb upgrade...

The external hdd serves as a back up really, and I no longer see much value for it in the workshop.
 
Basically you can’t use an external drive on the iPad, which sucks. Apple want you to use the cloud.

As you’ve found out, this means you need an iPad with lots of storage, which is expensive.

It also means that you need the 1TB adobe plan, which sucks as you’ll probably want LR classic on your desktop. 1TB and LR classic is £20 a month. More expense.

So, iPad is a nice way of working but it forces you into a corner and then steals your wallet.
 
So, iPad is a nice way of working but it forces you into a corner and then steals your wallet.
This^
I love my iPad, but it doesn’t work as part of a pro workflow.
Unless you’re desperately fixed to the iPad idea, have a good look at a Surface Pro or equivalent.
That’s my next purchase. :)
 
This^
I love my iPad, but it doesn’t work as part of a pro workflow.
Unless you’re desperately fixed to the iPad idea, have a good look at a Surface Pro or equivalent.
That’s my next purchase. :)

And I say this as someone fully (and at times exasperatedly) embedded in the Apple ecosystem; if you have lived thus far without it, stay clear.

If I could reset I would go Android + Windows. The options are far greater, you’re not hamstrung by Apple’s world view and nowadays there is plenty of excellent hardware that is equally as swanky as the Apple kit.
 
Lightroom with pen on surface pro as good as ipad?

I also anticipated digitising my piano sheet music library.

For the price of the 256gb I had myself convinced but will have to reevaluate alternatives.....
 
Have a look at a RAVpower FileHub Plus.

It's a device that allows you to connect USB drives, or Hard Drives, and SD cards to your iPad or other devices

I got one from Amazon and it works very well. £40 or so.

My iPad Pro is a 512Gb model though, so I don't have to keep backing up/moving files around.
 
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I got the 256gb, hopefully adobe cloud will alleviate the need for a lot of local storage.

Was prepared to get 512 but no one had stock in store. Including an apple premium reseller who didn't even have the 256 which I went to currys to get
 
I bought a MyPasport Wireless Pro Portable Harddrive this time last year for the exact purpose your looking for (My iPad Pro 12.9 Second Gen) - its a 4TB (there's 2TB/3TB options too) - a SD Card Slot and a USB Slot - it will do a quick backup of an SD Card - stick the card in and press a button.

I used this for storing Movie Files and Photo's on and then can access them via an app called FileBrowser Biz as you can add various external sources like Wireless Drives, etc.

It really only works as a backup though - I did however find that using the Apple SD Card Reader it was easy to import RAW's to Apple Photo's and then import them into Lightroom for culling, tweaking, editing (including in Affinity Photo) - albeit a bit of a faff.

It would be much easier if Apple just allowed you to plug a drive into the USB-C / Lightning Port and crack on...

Its one of the reasons I ditched my iPad Pro 12.9 - I did try the new one (picked up a 512GB on launch day) but as much as its a great device I just thought that close to £1800 for the Device, Pencil and KB Case was getting a bit nuts given some of these types of limitations - I do miss the simple ease of it v a Windows device though.
 
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Any recommendations on hard drive?

For processing photographs.

It's 1am, I can't sleep and here's what I've found out.

Lightroom Cc will only work off locally stored files.

So each card I use is 128gb, worst case scenario a job can have 200gb of raws. Meaning I would ideally need a 512gb ipad pro £££

To get the changes to my pc lightroom I would need to be able to sync the working files, my 20gb cloud storage won't cut it. So 1Tb upgrade...

The external hdd serves as a back up really, and I no longer see much value for it in the workshop.

I got the 256gb, hopefully adobe cloud will alleviate the need for a lot of local storage.

A hard drive is only for storage, it is where software and user files live. For processing photographs, it is the processor (CPU) and the memory (RAM) that you need. Most later generation iPads have good CPUs and RAMs that are capable of processing photos so you should be fine using an iPad (regardless of how much storage space) for processing photos. The only problem is that it only depends on the App itself. Usually an iPad app will have limited function compared to a desktop based application software having far more tools.

You have to remember that the 256GB storage ("hard drive") is not really going to give you 256GB. An iPad storage will be taken up by the iOS, any installed apps you have, and any other data you have, but usually depending on what apps you have and how much data you used, vary like tens of GBs, still leaving you with hundred of GBs of storage space. (Let's just say purely as an example: Of a 256GB storage space, you could be using 30GB for iOS, installed apps, data for the other apps (ie contacts, email, etc.,) and still leave you with something like 220GB for photos.)

I have an iPad with 128GB and it used up around 44GB but that's mostly for iOS, about 50(ish) apps, about a hundred of books for the iBook app, and some photos, plus mostly user data. All of my main photos are mostly on my desktop computer and sync to Creative Cloud rather than all on the iPad.

And remember: You do not have to be limited to Adobe's Creative Cloud. Nobody says you have to use Brand-A's own cloud storage or Brand-B's own. You can have any and as many of them. For example, I have Adobe's CC storage, Microsoft's OneDrive, Apple's iCloud, and Dropbox.

And enjoy your new iPad.
 
For proper RAW editing there's only really two big games in town - Affinity Photo which is fantastic and I found able to replace Photoshop.
Lightroom via the CC Subscription is great for cloud syncing and managing photo's, and the new iOS Photoshop (which is being described as an iOS equivalent of the desktop Photoshop) is due this year and should be fantastic!
 
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