The U Disk is basically a wireless flash drive that helps to expand the storage of your smartphone or tablet. It’s small, thin, and extremely portable; you can easily fit it in a pocket or even your wallet due to its credit card size. It’s available in two storage capacity sizes: 32GB and 64GB. You can control the U Disk via a mobile app; it works with Android, iOS, and Windows mobile devices and is charged via a micro-USB cable. It has a built-in 430mAh polymer rechargeable battery. It should be noted that the WiFi feature is only for connecting the U Disk to your mobile device for transferring data (not for actual Internet usage). It also has built-in encryption to ensure security (although I couldn’t find any details about it). Here’s a closer look at this small and useful device.
What’s in the Box
Inside the box, you’ll find the U Disk, a very short micro-USB cable, and an instruction manual.
Setting up U Disk
Since there’s no way to tell the battery level of the U Disk, you’ll want to charge it before initial use. The top LED indicator will illuminate blue while charging and turn green once fully charged. Unfortunately, the instruction manual is in Chinese, so it’s useless if you don’t speak/read it. For set up, I pretty much had to wing it. Hopefully, I don’t miss anything important. First, you’ll need to download the “Hidisk” app on your mobile device. If you have more than one mobile device (and/or if you have a significant other who also has one), it’s a good idea to download it on all of them so that you can easily share files between them. Press and hold the button (there’s only one) on the U Disk to turn it on; the bottom LED indicator will blink a few times and then remain illuminated (green). From here you will need to go to WiFi in your device settings. You should see it listed under your WiFi networks as “WFD009_######” (the second part will vary based on your U Disk). Tap on it to connect. The bottom LED indicator should now start to blink quickly, letting you know that it is connected.
Using U Disk
Now that you’re connected to your U Disk’s WiFi hotspot, you can open the mobile app. Note: you can open the app before connecting, but you won’t be able to access files on U Disk, and it will display “no available devices” at the bottom. On the app’s home screen it will display your phone’s capacity and the device’s (U Disk’s) capacity at the bottom. This is a great way to keep up with how much space is left. Surprisingly, it doesn’t include your micro-SD card’s capacity (I have one, and it doesn’t show). The Hidisk app works much like any other file manager app. It organizes your media and documents and allows you to view the files on your device and on the U Disk. Tapping on a category like Videos or Pictures will give you the opportunity to view them (videos play within the app) or transfer them from your mobile device to the U Disk. Just make sure to tap “Phone” at the bottom (“Device” will be selected by default) so that you can access the files on your mobile device. I like that photos are organized by album and not all lumped together on one never-ending page. You can also select multiple images at a time by tapping on “Edit” in the top-right corner. From there you can choose three options at the bottom of the app: Copy to Device, Move to Device, and Delete. Transferring files from your device to U Disk is as easy as that, and it’s pretty fast, too, thanks to speeds up to 150Mbps. Just to reiterate, when you are on the U Disk’s WiFi hotspot, you can’t do anything on your mobile device that requires the Internet; it’s only for viewing and transferring files. You can, however, switch back to your home or public WiFi network at any time via the hamburger menu in the app. Tapping that will bring up an option to “Connect to Internet.” Just select the network of your choice, and it will disconnect from the U Disk hotspot, so you can use the Internet as usual.
U Disk on Desktop
Another thing that’s great is that once you have files or documents on the U Disk, you can also access them from your desktop or laptop by simply plugging it into a USB port. Just know that doing this will also automatically disconnect the U Disk’s WiFi hotspot. When I plugged it into my Xubuntu desktop to charge, a folder in my file manager was opened up and displayed its content. Best of all, you can also drag and drop files from your desktop to the U Disk and then access them from your mobile device.
Final Thoughts
The U Disk is a great way to free up space on your mobile devices. Even without usable instructions I was mostly able to figure out how to set up and use it without issue. It’s also great that it supports multiple devices and can connect/operate simultaneously. This is perfect for sharing videos, images, and music with multiple devices and eliminates the need of downloading the files to each device. It can be a bit of a pain having to switch back and forth from the U Disk’s WiFi hotspot in order to transfer files, but unless you have a larger amount of files to transfer it shouldn’t take much of your time. Bottom line: DM’s Wireless WiFi U Disk is a huge timesaver, extremely lightweight, and very easy to use. DM Wireless WiFi U Disk
