Which flash drives work best for OTG?

[deltaforce]

Hello folks,

I have been playing with OTG cable and various flash drives. Have not tested all that I have, but wonder if anybody found a 'perfect' flash drive that consumes least amount of power and plays media smoothly through OTG cable.

I have HTC One X and I tried with Sandisk USB flash drive (SDCZ60-032G-A46). It recognizes the drive, can play movies through MX Player without any tweaks, but the video is jittery. I did not look into power consumption. I have 3 other drives that I need to check.

Until then if anyone found a perfect drive, would like to hear.

Thanks in advance.

 

[argedion]

I use a sandisk cruzer which is 8gig and it works great with my Nexus 7 no video skipping or delay when playing I can even pause it and come back a few minutes later play again and it plays fine. I'm also using MX Player for my video playback.

 

[mikedt]

Hello folks,

I have been playing with OTG cable and various flash drives. Have not tested all that I have, but wonder if anybody found a 'perfect' flash drive that consumes least amount of power and plays media smoothly through OTG cable.

I have HTC One X and I tried with Sandisk USB flash drive (SDCZ60-032G-A46). It recognizes the drive, can play movies through MX Player without any tweaks, but the video is jittery. I did not look into power consumption. I have 3 other drives that I need to check.

Until then if anyone found a perfect drive, would like to hear.

Thanks in advance.

SanDisk USBs should be ok. Do the videos play ok with MX when stored in internal memory?

 

[deltaforce]

@argedion,
Do you mind posting the model number please?

@mikedt,
Videos play without any problem when stored on internal memory. As mentioned in OP, other USB flash drives are not even recognized. So I suspect that this has to do with power draw (?) Hence this question.

 

[mikedt]

@mikedt,
Videos play without any problem when stored on internal memory. As mentioned in OP, other USB flash drives are not even recognized. So I suspect that this has to do with power draw (?) Hence this question.

I'm wondering if there's a problem with your HTC, in the way it's handling USB OTG. I've used USB sticks with a couple of Android devices, Chinese ones, and they've been fine. It's not really much different to how they work on a PC's USB ports AFAIK. It could be that it's not correctly recognising the SanDisk as a USB2.0 device, that's why video stutters because it's only working at the much slower USB1.0 speed, and other sticks it's not working at all. A PC will tell you you've got a USB2.0 device it's only recognised as USB1.0 with the "This device can perform faster..." messages, Android doesn't do this. Power consumption shouldn't be a problem here, USB flash drives don't take much current.

I know hard drives can sometimes be a problem with tablet's and phone's OTG, because they draw much more current unless they have an auxiliary power source.

 

[argedion]

Model Number is SDCZ36-008G

What are you using to mount the usb drive to the device.

I use StickMount by Chainfire. The device needs to be rooted in order for it to work. There are some apps that don't require root but my understanding is that they only read from a device and not write to it. However I did that research a while back when I was thinking of getting my OTG.

I have noticed with my Nexus 7(2012) that it will actually use more power during movie play with the movie on the USB than it will with the movie on internal storage. I'm assuming this is because it keeps power going to the USB to keep the Buffer up for playing the movie. However I never experienced skippy video I have even had the battery warning level dialog come up during the movie play and it still played fine.