I had an idea that somebody with more time and dev skills could run with. Here it is: write an app that allows someone to plug the iPhone or an iPod Touch into an external hard drive and browse its contents.

I have to deal with literally hundreds of external hard drives clients give me, and some I use for my own long term storage needs. The pain is that no manufacturer has figured out a way to put even a basic LCD on it that allows me to see what’s on a drive without having to power it up, plug it in a computer, and go from there.

For most consumers this is a non-issue but if you have a lot of drives, checking what’s on a hard drive, or see how much disk space is left, can become very time consuming.

So it would be great if I could connect an iPhone/iPod Touch to an external drive via USB and at least see the file names and how much disk space is still available, without having to go through a computer. Ideally this would work even without having to use an external power adapter for the drive (some drives can be powered up via USB only), but I don’t know if that’s technically possible with the iPod/iPhone’s limitations. I understand the chipset in those is a USB slave only, but maybe some super geeky dev or company could come up with a way around that.

I hope this proposal makes sense. If you’re ready for a challenge, go forth and create. I know lots of folks like me will thank you and pay handsomely for an app like that.