Why is my USB DRIVE not working? (iPad/iPhone)

What are the reasons why a USB flash drive or USB hard drive will not connect to an iPad or iPhone? In this video, I break down the four main reasons, including the adapter, power, file format and file types.

💾 Buy the USB gear shown in this video:

⏰ Time Stamps:
00:00 Introduction
00:54 Lightning to USB adapter
02:08 Power connections
03:45 Formatting (NTFS not supported)
05:19 File types (supported files in iOS)
06:39 iPhone and iPad Pro support (USB-C)
07:10 Powered USB hub

👍 Share this video with a friend:

🎞️ Other related videos:

✔️ Support the channel:

🔉 Recommended Gear:

Note - Links provided in this video description may be affiliate links, meaning that if you choose to purchase products using these links, a small commission may be paid to me for referring you.

🛒 Merchandise:

✉️ Connect with me:

[PeteJohnsMusic]

💾 Buy the USB gear shown in this video:

[bbgant]

I can’t thank you enough! Your instructional video is the greatest! For years I have been using a long involved process to transfer my photos from my iPad & iPhone to my external hard drive for storage. (Send photos to Google Drive, download them to my laptop, save them to a file, & finally copy them to my external hard). You have saved me so much time- I really appreciate it. And next time I’ll follow all of your links- I first bought a different flash drive & it didn’t work; I returned it & bought your recommended SanDisk & it worked right out of the box just like you said. I am an amateur photographer & I have hundreds of photos that I want to save & easily move around so I really appreciate your video! 😀

[jimmyspit]

Three years later….. you’ve saved the day once again my friend!!! After all of the tips and tricks I’ve got from your videos your channel has always just been in my suggested videos do to the search algorithm and I just now realized I wasn’t subscribed so boom!!! I am officially subscribed and hitting that notification!!!

[maheshkumars]

Finally you gave me the solution for the problem

[joshuajackett]

The more I use the iPad Pro (yes great device) but it is certainly not a laptop replacement

[los-one]

I totally went through this problem last week

[RedPanda_]

For those with issues connecting more than a pendrive at the same time, important to rename the pendrives, if 2 pendrives has the same name it won't work, seems that it's not detected but actually the issue is that has the same name that the already connected. Also remember that NTFS it's not supported, change into Exfat and solved ( for files more 4GB)

[BritishPhotography]

Thank you my drive was formatted for nttfs

[Xanohana]

In the year 2024 and this solved my problem of formatting the USB to exFAT to make it not in a read-only mode!

[joanneswain]

Thank you, this video answered my question and demonstrated what connector I will need. I was concerned the other port on the adapter wasn't a power "hole" but was a camera port or some other "hole" that couldn't allow me to charge while I used my iPad and USB files. This video told me AND showed me so I thank you for that.

[msd_]

My sandisk 256 gb pendrive option is not showing over the files please help me out

[qolubin]

Would u tell me why I can’t save any files into the flash! I can see the drive but I can’t transfer😢

[vancamerawoman]

Thank you for a great tutorial. My gen 1 iPad Pro used to work with a card reader but now does not. A power issue I’m guessing.

[sleekitwan]

Good solid advice Pete! Just spent about four hours trying to get a FAT32 SD card going. I used the same adapter as you, a sandisk SD32 micro card, sleeved in a full mini-SD casing/adapter. Anker multi USB 3 hub, it’s got a power ‘brick’ with it. The dream of putting an SD card into a usb adapter, then just slotting it into that genuine Apple usb 3 adapter still brought up ‘too much current’ warning. You won’t say it so i will…Apple are at it.

My home has £2, 000 of Apple kit, they’re doing ok, do i really need a whole chain and a power brick of tech, to use an SD card?! No, it’s a decision. Thanks pete. [EDIT: So the only SD card I could get to work slotted into my Anker brick-powered 7-gang USB (oh, ‘hub’ if you must) was the one formatted in a DR-680 Tascam portable digital recorder. £600 new. That’s an expensive SD formatting unit! My venerable Windows PC with it’s updated SSD primary drive, said all my SD cards were already FAT32, but it seems there’s FAT32 and FAT32. Honestly.

With Garageband iOS dropping midi notes when recording even it’s own instruments, it’s testing my faith. I love GB ios, but am forced to use Cubasis 3.3 now- just to make sure the recording or midi track doesn’t butcher my arpeggio and mollicate my triads. You don’t want that ‘appenin’ of a Sunday marnin’, do ee?!]

[Sidhu_]

My Samsung type c pen drive not showing in my iPad mini 6 with type c. Neither in files section nor somewhere else. Why??
Even though I tried many times

[timothyclay]

You can also rename the flash drive by plugging into an android phone using an otg adapter. (Which doesn't need power connected)

[MrCodypowell]

Yes, I was wondering how you got to the screen in frame 2:12 ..?? The same screen that on the left under browse locations shows you when your drive comes up. I really appreciate it!

[DJKavish]

Hi There, I am having an issue connecting my external hard drive to my 2020 iPad Pro. My external Hard Drive is password protected with Mac Password, it is showing on my Macbook Pro but not on iPad Pro, if you could help my this that would be great! Thanks in Advance.

[Trey-iugt]

I have a iPad 8gen and I’m try to connect a 4 tb sea gate hard drive to it the hard drive is in xfat format and I have the genuine apple adapter with power added from a lighting cable still not popping up in files the hard drive has iTunes files on it I’m not sure what the problem is ?

[crusincars]

Hey I have a quick question! So I recently bought the usb to iPhone adapter and I plugged in the usb flash drive with a bunch of my videos that were exported from my PlayStation right, but when I go to files on my iPhone, the video appears as a JPEG image instead of the full video….. when I plugged in the usb onto my Pc, I see the videos appear in max quality….? Why does this issue apply to me and is there any solution?