The point of the external hard drives is really just to have a backup. I don't have a 1TB collection of files that I need to access from multiple places. So I would never try to access my big backup from my phone. I don't do that kind of work from my phone, ever. If you're in that situation, something like Dropbox might help, provided that it doesn't eat all your CPU. Good for you! Glad it's working out.