DIY Wifi Drive

I keep a lot of my documents in the cloud. I like this because it's accessible from almost anywhere with an internet connection. Since going iPad I'm becoming more reliant on having data at hand, such as research docs or general reading.

However, what about those times when you dont have an internet connection (or have a lot of data to access)?

I've been looking at those WiFi drives in the shops and on ebay and thinking that would be kinda cool, but of course I tried to figure out a cheap way of accomplishing the same thing. I dont know about other techs, but I have quite a bit of general crap lying around in the way of old mobile phones, tablets etc. Why not re-task one of these devices?

I broke out my old androind 7" tablet thinking this would be a great test bed. A quick search on Google Play found an app called Samba Filesharing. This simply allows samba file sharing on your Android device. It's got some good settings such as password protection etc.

I already had an iOS app called File Browser (I couldn't find this on the online version of the appstore, but believe me, its there). You can use other apps of course, anything that accesses samba shares.

Follow the instructions and you'll be accessing your Android device just like any other drive.

Ok, so a 7" tablet is a bit bigger than a WiDrive right? Well I also happen to have a HTC Touch Pro 2 lying around. This currently has Windows Mobile 6.5 on it, and I haven't been able to find any software that does anything even close to the Android app above....but....

You can make this (and some other) devices kind of dual-boot Android, using FRX07.1. Follow the links for installation instructions. It takes less than the time to have a coffee to install. Just be sure to read the instructions, and first boot will take a while so be patient.

From there it's the same, install Samba Filesharing, set it up, and access.

Of course this mainly applies to iOS users, but it's still handy to know. Yes, there will be people out the ready to bag iOS for the fact you cant just plug in extra SD cards etc, but if you're that childish about your phone/tablet OS, maybe its time you put the portable device down, went outside and kicked a ball around for a while eh? :)

I'm happy to hear from anyone that tries this, or has other versions of how to do similar things.