External HD for iDevices??

I know this might sound kinda dumb but I am curious to know if there is a way to connect an external hard drive to an iDevice? I realize that there are WIRELESS external hard drives that basically allow the same thing but what if you cant use the wireless feature?

Say for example, your on a 12+ hour flight and you only have so much space on your device for so many movies and so much music but since its going to be a long flight, you want something to entertain you the whole way. Since most of the airlines that I am aware of dont offer wifi, how are you able to access your external HD if you cant use wifi or 3G?

It would just make sense to me to have an external HD with USB to connect to your device in that sort of circumstance.

I have heard of these, but i'm not exactly sure how the syncing works. I know that for an 8GB iTouch, you can put like 14 hours of video on your iTouch, and have 1 GB of music, and 1GB of apps. That's the kind of setup i have going....i have the same device as you. Why don't you just take a laptop or something?

I believe you can connect an external drive via the USB camera connection kit and iFile.

I'm not 100% sure though..

I tried on iPhone4...didn't work.... =\

Ok so after doing some research, I found the seagate goflex satellite external hard drive to be pretty intriguing. It doesn't use a USB cable to stream content but it creates it's own wireless network that you log onto to connect and watch media stored on the HD. Thats pretty smart and while they say that it's great for long ROAD trips, what about long flights? For instance, since the HD creates it's own wireless network, wouldn't that raise some flags within the plane? I know you can turn on your electronic devices after a while in the plane but I haven't heard about devises that broadcast wifi

Also, for anyone who has used this HD, are there USB charger adapters that would work on an airplane so that it will last longer than 5 hours?

I doubt the wifi signal it would provide will be strong enough to cause interference. now if you had a modem/router and had signal strong enough to span across a building they might say something, but good luck finding a way to do that in an airplane ive looked into the seagate hard drive, i have a 1 TB hard drive from them just usb and usb 3.0, i love it. it holds all of my 100+ movies, (SD and HD alike), and is very easy to use. that being said, the wifi version is pretty much the same just take away the usb. bad thing is, when you are combining it with an ipod touch you have to sync to its signal, hence no safari browsing or anything else requiring wifi while you use the hard drive. so it will be good for the plane, but you will quickly become frustrated when you have to choose between music or internet access. hope this helps

Well if it came to that, I would rather choose entertainment over internet connection. Im on the internet enough as it is. I certainly dont need to be on it at 35,000 ft for 12+ hours lol. Me and my wife are planning a trip to Germany in a couple of years so Im browsing around right now to see what options we have in the way of entertainment and so far, I think this seagate is the answer. I just wish it would last longer than 5 hours though. Guess I'll have to find a way to keep it charged.

You might be able to get an external battery to swap when it dies? If I were you I'd wait until it's closer to your trip, technology will surely evolve by then and there may be new options and probably cheaper prices too. But do what you will, the seagate hard drive is definitely cool and I would use it if I had one, it definitely has it's uses. If you get it though just remember to convert your movies to mp4 or other supported formats so you can watch them on idevices. That would suck to get in the plane for an international flight only to not be able to watch the movies you transfer cause the files aren't supported

Yeah I was thinkin to get a USB charger of some sort like what igo.com has but I havent found anything that would look like it would work. Ideally, I would just plug the seagate into the power outlet on the plane but from what I have been reading, not all planes have power outlets and im not about to pay to use one either.

As for the movies, All of my movies and TV shows are converted to MP4 thanks to handbrake. The seagate will support iTunes music formats also wont it?

Have you considered getting another device with a bit more storage? Seems like it would be a better fit. Also, if your going on a long trip, your probably bringing your laptop along anyway(?). Why not just upgrade your laptop hdd? you can use it to transfer your films during your flight, and as for movies outside of mpeg4 format there are several apps available for that, however, I would think a device with 64gb of storage is good enough for movies. Battery life for the laptop should not be that much if a concern since you won't be using for a few minutes to transfer your films. It's what I do on long trips myself. Just a suggestion though.