Seagate Introduces 500GB Wireless Drive For iPads

The iPad’s been out for a year, yet nobody’s come forth with a large, portable storage drive until Seagate introduced its wireless GoFlex Satellite last week.

With all the iPads and iPad 2’s flying out of Apple stores, many of which hold only relatively small amounts of application and file storage, it will be a welcome thing to have 500GB of easily-accessible, additional storage. After all, iPads, and most other tablet devices, only carry a limited amount of on-board storage (usually 16GB, 32GB or 64GB).

Leave The Cable At Home

What the Satellite (pictured) does for iPad owners, in fact, owners of any WiFi-enabled device, is give them  500 more gigabytes of portable capacity. Now that provides some options, such as enabling a user to take a large portion, if not all, of a media library on the road.

The hookup cables could be left at home, however the batteries are only specified to last for five hours. The Satellite will stream content to any connected device which is as WiFi-like as your home network or sitting down at Starbucks.

“We’re actually targeting the Satellite at households that have one or more tablets and, in particular, those who are exceeding the storage capacity of their devices,” Nathan Papadopulos, Seagate’s senior manager of Retail Corporate Communications, told eWEEK. “And that is not too difficult to do these days.

“The average users stores about 80GB to 100GB of content on a home PC,” he continued, “and most of those are media files, of course. Most of that content is video. And with HD video becoming more popular all the time, capacities are going to fill up faster than ever.”

The GoFlex Satellite carries 500GB of capacity, features Wi-Fi access over 802.11 b/g/n and has a rechargeable battery, Papadopulos said. “The wireless access works out to about 150 feet, which is about standard,” Papadopulos said.

Devices are wirelessly connected directly to the GoFlex Satellite drive by use of the free GoFlex Media app, which is available now on iTunes and the Apple App Store  –  or a Web browser, Papadopulos said.

GoFlex Satellite is expected to go on sale in the US in the next two weeks for $199.99 (£122.87) but  global availability will not be until later this summer, Papadopulos said. The UK price has yet to be announced.