Trying to decide between these two wireless hard drives; thoughts welcome

Hello Kristoffer,
Based on the two models of drives that you indicated that you were looking at, I have taken a careful look at each drive's specifications, and made an analysis.
The Lacie drive is much more expensive, but it does offer a longer battery life. It also does not offer an SD card slot.
The WD Passport drive offers a shorter battery life, but also has an SD slot for expansion and increased connectivity with the various portable memory devices that are possible, as well as a greater number of connected devices.

Unfortunately, the issue that you have pointed out is not specifically defined in either of the drive's specifications. Neither indicates whether or not they can be used while charging.
Honestly, the choice is up to you, but as you have asked for recommendations, this is mine.
Go with the WD Passport. As your brain and your gut told you.
You get additional memory connectivity options, increased device connectivity via wireless, as well as the fact that Western Digital (WD) is one of only three major manufacturers of hard drives on the planet.
Everyone else (including Lacie, Iomega, etc buy's hard drives from either Hitachi, Seagate, or Western Digital, repackages and rebrands them, slaps on a price tag, and all of a sudden, that HT, Seagate, or WD drive inside the case says lacie on it, and they box it up, make it pretty, and charge a $50 premium on it, and sell it to you like it was their own creation.
Not to mention, if you ever needed real support on the drive, especially data recovery, good luck.

I believe you will be satisfied with the Western Digital drive.
You will need to make charging and data loading preparations, but that's to be expected when preparing to leave home base for a while.

All the best,
Adam M

I'm curious to know the advantages of a wireless drive. It seems like it would be much slower and a pain to always have to worry about the status of the battery. Also, since batteries don't last forever, do you know if it is easy to replace the battery? I would hate to have data on a drive that I can't access because of a bad battery.

Hello,

Since you are talking about wireless, what wireless protocols do they use? Wireless G, N or AC? You want to avoid the G because it’s slow and if possible, get the AC so you can future proof your purchase. While most devices including IOS and Macs currently use wireless N, it won’t be long before they start shipping with wireless AC. I used to think I wouldn’t notice the difference between wireless N and AC. But if you transfer files from your device to the drive or stream meadia, you will notice it.

I would pick the WD for three reasons. It’s WD and I know what drive is in there. With the LaCie, it can be one of three drives and I am not a fan of Seagate. Two, The support and service WD provides is great. Should you ever need a replacement, they can send out a replacement, you can then try to move or recover your data to the new drive, then send back the old one using the same box and prepaid UPS label. Finally. The WD has an SD slot. This is a time saver if you ever need to move large amount of data to or from the drive to your device, a PC with an SD card reader or an IOS device with a camera kit. Try moving 100GB of data wirelessly and see how long it takes. Should your wifi time out or drop for a second, you will need to start over.

As far as battery life, ask yourself how often you will be away from a power outlet. If you’re like most people, chances are you will always be close to one.

HTH and good luck.

One of my girlfriends had a USB drive for her iPHONE. She could move videos and photos to and from it, just like connecting to a PC. But she couldn't put all her audio booksand ebooks, music and recordings, podcasts and documents or all the other app data one collects on it because iOS wants data to belong to a particular app. I'd consider a wireless drive if I could actually use it the same way I use an external drive with a computer, but my concern would be that I'd still have the phone filling up with app data.