Turn your iPhone into a wireless storage device
The iPhone is great for storing your music and video files, but it doesn’t it allow you to store other types of files so that you can use it for data portability or back up. Curiously, this is one of those obvious features that you wonder why Apple does not include in the iPhone right out of the box. We would love to carry our presentations and documents with us on our iPhones, and transfer them wirelessly from computer to computer. Today, our wishes came true with the release of DataCase, a native app for iPhone or iPod touch, now available in the App Store for $6.99. Business users, students, and anyone in need of more storage will love DataCase and find it well worth the seven bucks.
DataCase essentially turns your iPhone or iPod touch into an external memory device that you can access wirelessy from any other device on your wi-fi network. DataCase creates a drop box on your device which will be instantly familiar to Mac users. The drop box is a place where any network device can copy files to your device. You can also set up DataCase to be a shared drive to easily move files between your device and another computer.
Security is the first thing that comes to mind with an app like this. How can we be sure our files won’t be silently pilfered from our pockets? Like all native iPhone apps (at least for now), DataCase does not run as a background process. This means it has to be running in order for any data transfer to occur.
Secondly, the drop box is limited to one-way, write-only data transfer. Computers or devices on the network can only copy files into your drop box; they cannot read or browse files that are already resident in your drop box. By default, the drop box requires an access check for each remote connection.
This type of access control is also configurable for the other volumes on your device. You can set each volume to require access or not, and you can make them writable, browsable, both, or neither. You can also set volumes to be hidden. DataCase’s granular, on-request access control coupled with non-background running processes provide more than adequate security to give you peace of mind while you walk around with your data.
DataCase works with any wireless enabled computer (Mac, PC, Linux) and doesn’t require any additional software to be installed. On the Mac is uses Bonjour and the Finder so all you have to do is start DataCase and your device will automatically show up on your desktop. Copying files to DataCase is simply drag-and-drop.
DataCase offers many other features like a text search feature to search on file names. Folders and files are all fully UTF-8 compliant to support English, French, German, Chinese, and Korean. You can also rotate the view to landscape to see long file names.
You can throw your USB drives out and just carry your iPhone or iPod touch, because for seven bucks you really can’t beat this app for sheer utility when it comes to data portability and back up.
DataCase – Available now in the App Store
Add a comment (17 so far)
How does this compare to FileMagnet? Is the only difference that you have to download a seperate app on the mac?
@Lee – FileMagnet does accomplish the same thing, but there are a couple of key differences. For one, FileMagnet only works with Macs running OS 10.5.x, so Windows users are out of luck. It also requires you to install software on every Mac you wish to share files with. This makes the portability aspect much less convenient. Also, as of this writing, DataCase supports many more file types than FileMagnet.
The specs at Apple say that DataCase works with any wireless enabled computer (Mac, PC, Linux), so I downloaded it. Apparently it does not work with Vista PCs. The instructions are for an XP pc. I have tried to find it on my computer, but it is not there, other than in iTunes, where it seems to be only an icon.
@Enda – From windows you will need to go to windows explorer (not to be confused with Internet Explorer, if in doubt double click on “My Computer” and it should take you to windows explorer), in the path field at the top of the window were it has the path to the displayed folder you should put the URL on the DataCase UI that starts with “ftp://” and press enter. This should let you browse your files and upload/download as expected.
this sounds great and all, but how do I then get the files to another computer? Nothing that I have read here or on the App store says anything about transferring the files from the iPhone to a computer, just from a computer to the iPhone.
Well – I am glad to know that DataCase is “supposed” to work with Vista – however, not for me. Yes I did the “My Computer” thing and I also opened Windows Explorer with the Icon on the Vista pop up window. Either way, I typed in the ftp:// url on my Ipod’s DataCase, pressed enter, and get an error message. It says “An error occurred opening that page on the ftp server. Make sure you have permission to access that folder.” I was never using Internet Explorer, yet the ftp:// URL ends up under the icon for Internet Explorer.
I’ve fiddled a little with it on my Vista Ultimate. There is a definite problem in using it with the Windows Explorer under Vista. the only way I was able to get this great little app to work in Vista was to use an FTP client. Since I use Firefox 3 anyway I use the FireFtp extension avaiable at: http://fireftp.mozdev.org/
IPv6 should be set to used under settings.
Thank you for the comment Morris. I think the specs for this Apple App were misleading. However, I just downloaded the new update for the iPod Touch, and it now looks like the DataCase may be up and running. Too bad the folks at Apple did not wait a few days before releasing that DataCase until it was working. They would have saved customers like me a lot of frustration and wasted time.
I just used it with vista–ignore the error message and it will work. I’m using the new firmware for the ipod and vista business edition.
Good luck!
I did ignore the error messages, but it still does not work. There are no folders and I cannot drag anything to it.
I have this problem exactly as described with all the necessary steps followed with the official instrcutions. Very unhappy as it was the ultimate solution…
I emailed DataCase support and they responded with some suggestions, none of which worked. They said they would continue to help, but I’ve heard nothing back from them. I read the reviews at the Apps Store and while some PC-Vista people say they can get it to work, most of the PC comments there cannot.
Apparently, if you are MAC, this is a great app. If you are PC – take your chances and end up batting your head against the wall. Too bad the Apple Apps store gave us misleading information.
@Edna – Thanks for the update Edna. It’s a shame that some companies are not more forthcoming about this kind of information. If they were more customer focused they’d be here on Touchtip responding to our readers’ comments. The least they could do is give you a refund. Did they?
I did hear back a second time from Aaron at DataCase, but his second suggestion doesn’t work for me either.
“Now that I see this, I think i see the problem. Its not 192.168.1.102.2121, the last marker is a colon (:) not a period. If you type that URL in again using a colon, I bet it will work better.”
I went to the Apps store and tried to see how to request a refund, but saw no easy way and decided that I didn’t want to spend an hour or two trying to get back $7.00. I am very turned off by this situation and no longer want to spend any more time on this App.
Nice to see that not only me thats having problem with Datacase / Vista. Next time I use the App Store, I will check the internet first. Bad for the reputation of App Store.
This really is quite ludicrous that you have to buy a program that facilitates something that you would assume to be a standard function.
Would have been nice to know that it “probably does not work” on Vista – what a waste of $10. I see on their support page they mention nothing of Vista! They dont even have a contact address!