AirStash is little but packs big storage

Portable hard drives are going wireless, writes Gareth van Zyl.

The Wearable AirStash USB flash drive.

Portable hard drives are commonly used today to store files, music and movies. However, they come with USB cables that are easily lost, and these drives can be used on only one computer at a time.

So a US company called Wearablehas created the AirStash, a US$100 (Dh367) USB flash drive that when plugged into your computer allows you drag and drop files on to the device and then share those files wirelessly with nearby devices.

The flash drive can free up the already limited space on your smartphone or laptop by letting you download all your apps, music, movies, photos and other files only on to the AirStash.

The flash drive creates its own Wi-Fi network, enabling others to access the content on the drive as long as they are connected to the wireless signal it emits.

The AirStash flash drive supports secure digital cards of up to 32 gigabytes capacity, and you can load any kind of content.

Photographers can preview and share their digital shots with other computers around them by plugging their camera's memory card into AirStash. It also provides up to five hours of non-stop streaming for those who want to watch films and TV shows. AirStash uses a built-in Web server for file sharing, which enables up to eight people to connect to the one device simultaneously.

There is also a dedicated AirStash iPhone and iPad app that is essentially a file browser that lets you import photos from a memory card, either individually or by directory.

The application, though, does not have an option to selectively choose multiple items at a time, something which the developers of the app should consider implementing in future. Otherwise, the product's small size means you can easily fit it into a pocket while saving hard drive space on your bigger external hard drives.