Kingston Wi-Drive

[strollin]

Anybody else using one with their KF? (Long post warning!)

The Wi-Drive is a battery-powered, portable flash drive (16, 32 & 64G sizes) that the KF can connect to via wi-fi to be able to access pics, music and video stored on the drive. Up to 3 devices can share the drive simultaneously.

I ordered a 16G model and received it yesterday. I've only used it for a few hours so these are only my initial impressions.

It's about the size of a cell phone, it comes with a wall charger but can also be charged via USB cable attached to your computer. I attached it to my computer via included USB cable, it appears as 2 drives, a CD ROM and an hdd. I created some folders and copied some jpgs, mp3s and mp4s to the hdd. Then I disconnected the KF from my computer. First issue encountered, no matter what I did, I could never get the KF to "safely" eject. This was a problem each time I tried to disconnect it from my computer, even with several different computers. After several attempts to eject and Windows informing me that it couldn't be ejected because something was using it, I finally just went ahead and disconnected it.

Once disconnected from the computer, I powered it up, it takes about 30 seconds or so for the device to boot and the wi-fi access point to become enabled.

I installed the free Wi-Drive app from the Amazon Market that needs to be installed on the KF so it can access the drive. I went into the KF wi-fi settings and found the Wi-Drive listed as an available hotspot and was able to connect to it. Note: At this point the KF wi-fi is connected only to the Wi-Drive so you no longer have an internet connection. I opened the Wi-Drive app and was then able to access the content on the drive. There wasn't any noticeable lag when accessing the content from the drive, pics popped up quickly and video played with no lag or stutter. Music played smoothly as well.

There is also a generic Wi-Drive app in the Android Market so I installed that on my Droid phone. I was able to have both the phone and the KF accessing content on the drive with no issues. Both devices could access all the content and I was able to have both of them playing the same video as well as 2 different videos with no lag or stuttering. I haven't had the chance to try 3 devices yet but 2 devices worked well in my limited testing.

I mentioned that once the KF is connected to the Wi-Drive, you no longer have an internet connection. Kingston has a solution for that where you can have the KF connect to the Wi-Drive and connect the Wi-Drive to your router then create a network bridge. At least that's what is supposed to happen. I couldn't get it to work and called Tech Support, 1st level barely knew what I was talking about so got bumped to 2nd level. The 2nd level tech tried to help but wasn't successful either. The Wi-Drive connects to my router OK but can't get access to the internet. I mentioned that the KF had just gotten an OS update within the last week which he was not aware of. He put me on hold and spoke to the engineers who told him they noticed that the OS update broke that feature and they are working on a fix. They couldn't give me an estimate of when they would have it fixed. For now, when my KF or other Android device is connected to the Wi-Drive, there is no way to access the internet.

Overall, I believe the W-D is pretty cool and useful. Using the free W-D app you can access files on the drive as if it was a local drive. You can open the files, copy them or delete them. It's a viable way to expand the storage capability of the KF since it's built-in storage is limited and not expandable. One glaring omission is that you can't save anything from the KF to the W-D, the only way to put content on the drive is to attach it to a computer via USB cable and copy stuff that way.

The included User Guide is pretty useless (for instance, it doesn't even mention the network bridging capability) but there is a KF User Manual on the Kingston site that is much more informative.

Hopefully, they will issue a firmware update soon to get the network bridge feature working because I don't want to give up internet access in order to use the W-D.

I hope they update the W-D app in the future to enable the KF to save content to the drive. It would be great to be able to download things from the net and save them on the W-D. Another thing on my wish list would be for a Windows client that could access the W-D via wi-fi from my computer. That way I could move content between the W-D and my computer without using the USB cable.

[grvthang]

Thanks for your informative review.
As far as your problem ejecting the Fire goes - are you sure you had all windows showing the Fire's drive closed? Although you may not have the drive open, simply having it show up in an open "My Computer" window will cause you to get a message saying that it's in use and can't be ejected. I often have this scenario occur when diconnecting devices.

[strollin]

Thanks for your informative review.
As far as your problem ejecting the Fire goes - are you sure you had all windows showing the Fire's drive closed? Although you may not have the drive open, simply having it show up in an open "My Computer" window will cause you to get a message saying that it's in use and can't be ejected. I often have this scenario occur when diconnecting devices.

Absolutely, I've been using USB devices on Win machines since Win 98 so have a little experience safely ejecting them. Since I'm using Win 7, I can set the Policies for the W-D to use the "Quick Removal" option which turns off write-caching and actually makes it unnecessary to use the "safely" eject button so it's not really a problem, I just thought it was interesting that it wouldn't eject.

[strollin]

Did a followup with Kingston regarding the network bridge feature of the W-D, when I called last they told me it was a known problem and they were working on a fix. Now they told me there was no problem and no forthcoming fix. Anyway, after several calls and a couple of hours on the phone with tech support and development, I finally have the bridge feature working. Not sure what the fix was as it just started working at some point, after the umpteenth time trying it.

Anyway, now I can be connected to the W-D and still access the internet from my KF.