As I mentioned in my Build A Geek-Army Knife post, I love hard drive space. The more I have, the happier I am. One thing that bothers me though is the lack of space Smartphones and tablets come with — usually around 64GB or less. After the operating system and apps, the remaining space for digital content is even less than that.
It doesn’t take a lot of effort to buy a larger MicroSD card and plug it in, but the larger capacity cards still cost a pretty penny these days. And plugging your phone or tablet into your computer can be a pain in the ass depending on the type and even the brand (I’m still having problems keeping my tablet (Samsung Galaxy 2) connected: some days it connects like a drive, some days it doesn’t).
In this age of cloud storage, mobile gadgets need local room to store stuff; and speaking from personal experience, I don’t have enough of it. That’s where Wi-Fi drives come to the rescue. Wi-Fi drives are an excellent solution. You load the device with your media (from a PC/Mac via USB), carry it with you when you travel, then connect to the device via Wi-Fi when you need to access its contents.
Wi-Fi drives are as varied as your imagination: you can wirelessly stream music or video; use them as wireless NAS boxes; or, in the case of some models, provide guest access to friends and family visiting your home while keeping your home network completely isolated from their prying eyes or unprotected laptops.
I’ve been looking at some different Wi-Fi drives lately and I’ve managed to narrow my choices down to three different models:
Corsair Voyager Air $169.99 on Amazon
Corsair’s drive offers up to 1TB of storage to an existing network and is capable of wirelessly streaming content to eight Wi-Fi-enabled devices. It includes USB 3.0 and Ethernet connections, which make it easy to turn the Voyager into a NAS.
LaCie Fuel $199.99 MSRP
Just revealed at CES 2014, the 1TB Fuel comes with one Micro-USB 3.0 port, a USB cable and will wirelessly stream to your mobile device (up to five devices, 3 for streaming HD content). Fuel can also integrate with a Dropbox account, so in addition to syncing files with your computer, you can also sync to your Dropbox account.
Seagate Wireless Plus $182.83 on Amazon
The Seagate Wireless Plus wirelessly adds 1TB of storage space to up to eight mobile devices. It can relay Wi-Fi Internet access and works well as a fast portable drive or as a robust mobile media server.
All three of these devices look to be capable of extending your Smartphone’s or tablet’s storage and provide some great features. I’ve emailed all three companies asking for review copies. Hopefully, I’ll be posting my reviews here soon.
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