Root a501 rooting (to use external hard drive)

[ebauza]

I am interested in rooting my a501 so that I can use my external hard drive for watching movies and listening to music. The research I have done so far seems to show that I will have to downgrade to 3.0.1 (i think) in order to root. Then use Drive Mount to mount my external drive. Is this correct? I want to get my steps planned out before I start, so I am not flying by the seat of my pants.

Or, are there any A501 roms that would be preferable to flash after rooting instead of running stock 3.0.1?

 

[dbldipp]

This forum is for the A500 but I would imagine they are prety much alike. It should recognize and external HD without rooting. If you have all factory updates up to date it should work fine. Plug in the drive to the USB port. I've read external drives with mine ( Before rooting) and it read them fine. There might be a drive brand that won't work but I've tried several different brands and all have been readable. There are some brands of thumb drives that they won't read but most will work. Make sure the drive is formated in FAT format before you try, just to be safe. Mine reads NTFS as well as FAT. My tablet is an A500. Good luck!

 

[dbldipp]

I just reread your post... You are not up to date on you OS updates. If you get the updates to 3.2.1 you will be able to read the external drives. The 3.2.1 is the best version of Android short of going to ICS. So do all your updates and see if that doesn't solve you problem. I would not recomend any rom other than stock if you aren't familliar with Android and how to flash the tablet.