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USB Mass Storage

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Check six!
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Xperia Z owners probably know by now that Sony chose to leave Mass Storage Mode (MSC) as a connection option alongside Media Transfer Mode (MTP) in Settings/Xperia/USB Connectivity. This allows the handset's storage to be seen as simple removable drives when connected to non-Windows computers.

What I've only realised today is that they also included USB Mass Storage support. Put simply, using a cheap USB On-The-Go cable (I used the Samsung cable designed for the S2 & Note2) allows external devices to be mounted to the handset's file system. So far I've had it working with various 'thumbdrives', but it should also work with any device that doesn't require to be powered by the USB port. Nice one Sony, but why not mention this more loudly?!? :D

p.s. It will of course work with powered devices provided they are using an external power source. When I have time I'll try connecting one of my 250GB external backup drives to confirm this. ;)
 
Do you know something I don't, Sam? :)

I found a USB-microSD adaptor last night so tried that.... worked fine with the largest-capacity card I've got spare, an 8GB. Tests with the external hdd and a card reader will follow later.

Results:
Multiformat card reader works perfectly.
The external drives were recognised but couldn't be read due to "unsupported format' i.e. I forgot they're formatted NTFS! :o
 
Nice, yeah whilst not officially supported I don't see why a larger one would not work in FAT32, just seems a bit of a shame to format such a large drive into that format.
 
Thats odd, they have some strange sort of proprietary system built into their cable. Almost any OTG cable should do the job.
 
That would be moto. Their phones are finicky with non moto cables for charging and flashing. So I would not be surprised if that was the case.
 
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