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External Hard Drive

I

Ian Preddy

Member
Hi all,

I have an A5 (2017) and wish to be able to look at my Windows PC's photo folders whilst away from home. If I buy something like this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Portable-E...al+hard+drive&qid=1569689914&s=gateway&sr=8-4

will I be able to copy my photos (and documents/spreadsheets for that matter) on to the drive and read the files on my phone via USB cable? Would there be any difficulty in transferring Windows-based files to an Android-formatted device?

Thanks,

Ian
 
Can it take a separate power supply? Most phones' USB sockets won't deliver enough power to run a spinning disk hard drive.

As for compatibility, it will depend on how what filesystem you use. That drive comes formatted as ExFAT, which many Android devices will read but I can't guarantee all will (depends on what the manufacturer did with the software build). There seem to be software workarounds though, though I've not read them in any detail (or, worst comes to the worst, there are tricks to format a drive of that size as fat32, but I'd hope that wouldn't be needed).
 
well i can say that my old note 4 i could use a portable hard drive via a micro sd to usb dongle that samsung has. it worked great. i also used the dongle and hard drive on my tab 10.1" tablet back in the day as well.
 
Interesting. Not being able to power a drive was a common problem, but if 2 Samsung devices could do this then that's encouraging.
 
Hi all,

Thanks to you all for your contributions. First, Gecko, the blurb for the product you suggest says "Designed to work with both Windows and Mac." No mention of Android.

Danny - I note that the A5 has a card slot and am using it for a 32GB card already. I'm thinking about an external drive because I could also use it with my Samsung tablet as well as it being a secondary back up.

Hadron - Silly me! I was thinking about the external drive in terms of a memory stick; I'd forgotten about the power requirements. Would a SSD version overcome this issue? I note that the Sandisk product suggested by Danny is of this type. Could it work with a PC and an Android device, though?

Thanks again all. I suppose that in the worst case I could buy a 256GB card for the card slot, which the A5 data sheet says it could accommodate. I could then manually swap between phone and tablet. Price-wise, it would be a better bet than an external drive.
 
Ian Preddy said:
Hi all,

Thanks to you all for your contributions. First, Gecko, the blurb for the product you suggest says "Designed to work with both Windows and Mac." No mention of Android.

Danny - I note that the A5 has a card slot and am using it for a 32GB card already. I'm thinking about an external drive because I could also use it with my Samsung tablet as well as it being a secondary back up.

Hadron - Silly me! I was thinking about the external drive in terms of a memory stick; I'd forgotten about the power requirements. Would a SSD version overcome this issue? I note that the Sandisk product suggested by Danny is of this type. Could it work with a PC and an Android device, though?

Thanks again all. I suppose that in the worst case I could buy a 256GB card for the card slot, which the A5 data sheet says it could accommodate. I could then manually swap between phone and tablet. Price-wise, it would be a better bet than an external drive.
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