WD My Passport Wireless
=======================

I have got this external hard drive before some time. In an ideal world it
should be unnecessary for me (much simpler solution should be enough). Bud
there is no ideal world, you know.

My problem is quite simple: I have a digital camera with an USB connector and a
a SD card slot (the HP PhotoSmart 735).  I also have other (Linux-based)
devices with USB connectors and sometimes I need to move data between them. The
typical case is an attempt to get pictures from the camera to my tablet in
order to see them.


Little excursion to the past
----------------------------

I have the PhptoSmart 735 camera from 2004. Actually I got the second one when
the original one broke. I tried to use something newer but returned to the old
HP. For a long time I used the LinkSys NSLU-2  [1] network storage  device to
get data from camera to my SGI O2. It is possible to use an USB-SD adapter to
connect the card from the camera to the NSLU-2 and the Sharity Lite [2]
software on the SGI side to access it (the integrated FTP server in the NSLU-2
is too limited for comfortable use). Of course, there were some issues (some
random  problems with mounting) and the solution was not the fastest possible.
But it worked (it also worked for most of USB sticks: my NSLU-2 has problems
with USB harddisks - I never needed them to much so I left this issue
unresolved). Please note that the Sharity is an commercial software (and the
Lite version is no longer available). I actually recently purchased the current
version (it still supports the IRIX and other old good systems!).

As IRIX cannot do certain types of remote accesses I had to use a Linux box as
a proxy. The NSLU-2 is not very useful for this (its original firmware is too
restricted and the box itself s a bit slow for that). So I used a Linux laptop
for this task and then replaced it with the Raspberry Pi and now I have an
Intel Compute Stick for this use (and also for some Internet-related tasks as
the IRIX browser are more and more limited in the modern WWW environment
because of speed and compatibility issues).

It is obvious that it is senseless to use 2 or 3 devices for similar tasks (any
Linux box can mount USB drives and share them with other computers). Thus I
stopped to use the NSLU-2 long time ago.


Today's problems
----------------

Today, everything has USB ports, a Bluetooth and a WiFi connection so
everything has to work easily. But is does not:

* one cannot connect USB stick to most portable devices (no such support on the
  Ubuntu Touch, the Android is slightly better),
* even if it is possible then the limitation are so high than it makes the
  connection almost useless or the where procedure is over complicated
* the recommended approach is to store data in the cloud but I do now want to
* sell my data to anyone (I often I even don't have an internet access when I
  need to move the data)

Wireless Harddisk
-----------------

But I have got an internet-enabled harddisk!? Yes, because it help me in some
cases. It is not necessary to connect it to an external WiFi network. It can
itself act as an access point and it allows sharing of data by the SMB and the
FTP protocols (and other but I even don't know what is the "DLNA server..." so
I turned that thing off).

It has a SD slot and it can be configured to automatically import the data from
the SD to a directory. And it has an internal battery so I can run up to 5
hours without power source (it's a producer's claim - I never had it on for so long time). So it can:
* store data from my camera's SD card,
* offer all its data to other machines (my Ubuntu phone and tablet, our Android
	tablet and so) via it's own  private WiFi, and it can do it also during
	traveling (even in a train when the disk lies a a bag and only the tablet is
	used), it is especially useful for portable devices with limited storage
	space,
* be used as a normal USB external hardisk for data exchange with a normal
	desktop computer. 

It is also possible to connect to the harddisk with the SSH. It allows to do
some more thing here (it's a normal Linux with somewhat restricted arsenal of
tools). 
Actually, it allows me to carry only a phone and a camera for longer trips (an
no laptop nor tablet). Of course I often also have one of my older pocket
computers with me (the Palm, the Zaurus or the NanoNote) to be able to do rest
of the tasks.

And I noticed that the Ubuntu Touch File Manager can be used easily with the
disk but it requires the unrestricted version of the file manager (from the
OpenStore) as the standard version fails during trying to use SMB.



References:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSLU2
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharity