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  • hacksugar: Working with iPad-mounted USB drives

    by 
    Erica Sadun
    Erica Sadun
    05.11.2010

    Recently, TUAW has looked at using the iPad's camera connection kit to attach and use USB drives. If you're using a jailbroken iPad, you'll be pleased to discover that the camera connection kit allows you to connect a USB stick or hard drive and access it from your iPad. That means you can easily bring extra files on-the-go and copy them into third party (i.e. no, you're not going to update your iTunes library on the go...yet) applications. Mounting drives is the province of a built-in application called MobileStorageMounter. It's part of the iPad's core services. When it sees a new FAT or HFS USB device, it attempts to mount that device using standard Unix services. If it finds a built-in DCIM folder on the drive, it launches the iPad Photos application. If not, it throws up the dialog shown at the top of this post, reporting that the attached USB device is not supported. As far as you're concerned, that error message is good news. It means that the device has been properly mounted and is ready for use. If you do not see the dialog, it's time to take one of two courses of action: a quick fix that works most of the time and a thorough fix that always works. Read on to learn more...