Help External Drive Possible?

[mfwills]

Is it possible to connect any sort of external drive (let's limit it to a Flash drive for now) to an Android phone via USB?

I am assuming it would require a female USB to male micro USB cable, if such a thing exists.

The real question is, would the phone recognize it as a drive to be mounted?

 

[chanchan05]

It depends if the phone has the hardware to recognize the drive in the first place. For example, my Note 2 can read flash drives via an adapter, or the new model flash drives with a microusb adapter built in. However my Galaxy V cannot. Normally, high end phones and mid range to high end tablets have this feature. Also, note that this feature cannot be activated by an app. AFAIK the hardware has to support it in the first place.

 

[mfwills]

Any idea if it would work with a Galaxy S4?

 

[Hadron]

The feature is called USB On The Go (normally referred to as USB OTG). And a quick Web search says it's supported on the S4 (which I expected as other flagships of that period support it - I regularly use it with my HTC One M7).

You need a USB OTG cable, which is the adapter you were wondering about. They don't cost much.

 

[mfwills]

Many thanks.

 

[mfwills]

OK. I bought the USB OTG cable and have it connecting a 32 GB flash drive to my phone.

When the drive is connected to my computer, it clearly shows a movie I had hoped to take with me.

When the drive is connected to my phone, all I see is two folders (Android, LOST.DIR), neither of which contain the movie.

This is with either ES File Explorer or the native MyFiles app.

Any advice?

 

[Member 1919122]

Is this showing up for you?

 

[mfwills]

I see the drive and the folders as described. I don't see an "Allow access" dialog.

 

[Member 1919122]

I'm wondering wether or not that device supports it.

 

[Member 1919122]

Are you seeing anything in the Android folder?

 

[Jfalls63]

Just checked my i337 S4 using a SanDisk duel USB flash drive and was able to read/copy files from phone and drive.

 

[mfwills]

I found several apps at Google Play which allow the phone to see the files (without root), so all is good. Just weird that I can see only a limited list with the native file utility.

 

[mfwills]

Well, I thought I had the answer, but oddly, none of the apps actually worked. They would not see files on the flash drive.

I finally figured it out.

You have to format the drive using the phone, not a computer. Once formatted, you can use a computer to put files on the drive and the phone will see them.

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/d...y-card-or-flash-drive-using-an-android-device

 

[peterh337]

The external drive needs to be formatted using FAT32 or FAT64, not NTFS.

It works with my T705 tablet but not with the S6 phone.