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[Q] Trouble Mounting 1TB Hard Drive

I purchased the G-Tablet because I wanted a way to download photos from my camera's memory, view them, and write them to an external hard drive. The problem I've run into is that I can't get my tablet (running TnT-Lite) to recognize my 1TB Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex drive to mount. I've done a lot of searching for answers, and my first thought was that the drive wasn't receiving enough power, but I've tried it through the docking station and a powered USB hub without any luck. I also reformatted it to Fat32 just to be sure it wasn't the drive format. Sniffer never even notices it's connected.
I'm using TnT-Lite, but am perfectly willing to try other ROMs if they have better external drive support. I'm not super familiar with linux so I haven't tried seeing if I could manually mount the drive, but if someone would be interested in telling me how to see if it's recognized and manually mount it I'm all ears.
Cheers!
Gaines Kergosien
(615) 412-9739

Kind of a repost...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=912212
Two things:
Make sure your harddrive format is supported by your kernel. Some kernels like clemsin support ntfs and other formats. I am not really sure what formats does the kernel that comes with tnt lite supports, but i recomend to check or install another kernel.
Second; make sure you connects your HDD to a power source before using it. I have not tried it myself, but i heard that the low power source of the usb port of the g tablet is not enough to supply power to the HDD.
Good luck with that, hope you find a solution to the problem.

Another thought, have you tried rebooting the tab after you've plugged the HDD in. I have a 500 gb WD elements, and if I'm having issues, usually rebooting with the drive plugged up takes care of it.

Pazzu510 said:
Kind of a repost...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=912212
Two things:
...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, others have posted similar issues, albeit with different drives/ROMs and little or no followup to troubleshoot the problem and no real solution.
I believe I was very specific in mentioning during the opening post that I tried using external power (via the dock and powered USB hub) and different drive formats.

lordgodgeneral said:
Another thought, have you tried rebooting the tab after you've plugged the HDD in. I have a 500 gb WD elements, and if I'm having issues, usually rebooting with the drive plugged up takes care of it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the suggestion. I've tried having it plugged in via the dock and powered hub before boot, but still no dice.
The best case scenario for me is that someone here has the same drive, overcame this issue and is willing to share their solution. I'm hoping that I can at least find someone who knows enough about linux/ROMs to help me troubleshoot and figure out if this is a hardware, driver or software issue. Maybe the drive is being recognized but the partition isn't getting mounted for some reason? *shrug*

Try partitioning your drive to 2 500gb sections. I don't think android os recognizes 1tb drive sizes. Just a thought.

Mantara said:
Try partitioning your drive to 2 500gb sections. I don't think android os recognizes 1tb drive sizes. Just a thought.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Excellent suggestion. Just repartitioned it as (2) 465GB fat32 drives and copied over some test files, plugged the drive into the powered USB hub, plugged that into the G-tablet, booted...and at first I thought it didn't work. Then an hour later I look at my tablet and realize it's mounted! I can see the image file I was using to test it...except the image (png) doesn't open. I try moving it to the SDCard using iFileManager and it errors.
...so on the up side, the drive mounted. On the down side, there may still be some issues.

You didn't say what model drive. I got a 1TB drive to use on my Tonido plug server and server would not recognize it. apparently some of the new drives need non standard drivers. For bulk storage, the tonido works great and accessible from the web.

Rumbleweed said:
You didn't say what model drive. I got a 1TB drive to use on my Tonido plug server and server would not recognize it. apparently some of the new drives need non standard drivers. For bulk storage, the tonido works great and accessible from the web.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is my opening post that difficult to read? Pretty sure I said it's a 1TB Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex.

not only is this not developement but snapping at the people trying to help you is just gonna not get you any help

Moved to general.

I have the exact same hard drive and the exact same problem as well. Running Cal's 1.1 with Clem's latest kernal ver. 6. No luck in seeing it.
Also, even with a thumb drive it cannot recognize it if it's formatted as NTFS. I know it's supposed to work but there must be something I'm doing wrong. Any ideas?
Thanks

thebadfrog said:
not only is this not developement but snapping at the people trying to help you is just gonna not get you any help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It seemed to me that troubleshooting problems with ROMs not correctly mounting drives fell under development along with the ROM being used.
As for snapping at people, maybe I wasn't as appreciative of their effort as I should have been, but I felt like people were replying without even reading the opening post where I had tried hard to explain the situation in detail. It's like taking your car to a mechanic and telling him it's making a clunking sound, then receiving a call from them later saying, "Yeah, we took a look and there seems to be a clunking sound."

you try using a file explorer like root explorer?? or only sniffer?

rover442 said:
I have the exact same hard drive and the exact same problem as well. Running Cal's 1.1 with Clem's latest kernal ver. 6. No luck in seeing it.
Also, even with a thumb drive it cannot recognize it if it's formatted as NTFS. I know it's supposed to work but there must be something I'm doing wrong. Any ideas?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey rover442. I'm thrilled to have gotten it to mount and, hopefully if we work together, we can figure out how to get everything working properly. To recap, here's what I did to get it to mount:
Delete the existing partition using Windows Disk Management
Create two new partitions (under 500GB)
Format those partitions using fat32format
Plug the drive into the tablet via a powered usb hub
Reboot
Wait an undefined amount of time for it to magically mount

10roller said:
you try using a file explorer like root explorer?? or only sniffer?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've tried all of them, but when it finally mounted I noticed it in Sniffer then was able to access it using iFileManager.

Ok gaines. I'll reformat the drive and partition it and see what happens. Thanks!

Gaines, I made two partitions. I put an mp3 in each partition. Loaded it into G Tab and it sees one of the partitions and the mp3. It does not see the other partition. FTR, I am not using a powered USB, just plugging straight into the G. (formatted fat 32 on the external hard drive).

Success
Ok here's what I did to make things work in FAT 32
I downloaded a partition software called EASEUS Partition master Home. It was free. I fromatted again the whole 1TB hard drive (931GB available). here are the following tests I did:
Partition 431GB successfully seen in G Tab
Partition 531GB successfully seen in G Tab
So since I broke the 500GB threshold I tried to partition 631GB and it was good. So then I just repartitioned for the whole 931GB available and it is now being seen in Sniffer and Root Explorer. So it's fine.
However, the G Tab still cannot recognize NTFS.

You need a kernel that supports ntfs. Android does not recognise ntfs natively

[Q] XOOM and portable hard drive

Does the XOOM pair well with a portable hard drive? Im noticing I am traveling more, and need my laptop less and less in the process. The XOOM seems to take care of a majority of my needs, but I was wondering if I am able to plug in an external portable hard drive, and have the XOOM pull data, and add data to the hard drive. I'm sure I would need an app to do this (if possible) as well?
Your help is greatly appreciated

anyone know this?

If you use a USB Drive enable kernel (like Tiamet) and the drive is powered and does not contain a USB hub (like the one I tried), it might work.

I actually tried this yesterday. My XOOM is rooted and configured to use a USB Host adapter to accept USB storage. I've tested with several thumb drives, all seem to work. Yesterday I hooked up a 320GB self powered USB HDD and unfortunately it did not work. It could be just this drive, so only way to find out is test with others =)

StirCwazy said:
I actually tried this yesterday. My XOOM is rooted and configured to use a USB Host adapter to accept USB storage. I've tested with several thumb drives, all seem to work. Yesterday I hooked up a 320GB self powered USB HDD and unfortunately it did not work. It could be just this drive, so only way to find out is test with others =)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your problem is most likely that you don't have the drive formatted as FAT32. I tried a 250GB drive and it worked nicely. In this thread I have a link to a site that offers you a free simple solution (Windows itself does not allow formatting of such large drives with FAT32).

funnycreature said:
Your problem is most likely that you don't have the drive formatted as FAT32. I tried a 250GB drive and it worked nicely. In this thread I have a link to a site that offers you a free simple solution (Windows itself does not allow formatting of such large drives with FAT32).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You know what, you are 100% correct. I forgot I had this drive formatted at NTFS for something else I was toying with. I just tried a FAT32 self powered USB drive (120GB) and it worked just fine.

StirCwazy said:
You know what, you are 100% correct. I forgot I had this drive formatted at NTFS for something else I was toying with. I just tried a FAT32 self powered USB drive (120GB) and it worked just fine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I LOVE easy solutions! Enjoy your HDD and don't forget to thank the guys that enabled the USB hosting!!!

so I should pick up a hard drive (portable), and then format it to fat32? Ill use the link from your post and I'm good?

kasrhp said:
so I should pick up a hard drive (portable), and then format it to fat32? Ill use the link from your post and I'm good?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you read the thread carefully people mention issues with certain thumb drives that have indicator lights because they might require too much power. However, when I connect my iPhone all it does is charge So my interpretation is that the HDD needs to have its own power source

Sadly the problem with fat32 and Android in general at the moment is that you can't use files >2 gigs. You could on Androids internal storage which is usually a file system that supports large files(RFS,EXT3/4...) if your device has that much internal storage available.
Does anyone know what our internal file system is? I haven't messed with it enough to know yet - but assuming because the thing mounts in Windows. - its FAT(at least the part we can mount and write to from windows).
And all of this boils down to Windows and their lack of reality in that we don't all run NTFS, and that maybe, possibly, someone MIGHT WANT TO HOOK UP A GOD BLESSED EXT DRIVE!
But i guess I could just format all of my stuff as NTFS, because the open source community is actually smart and Linux can read it. But then again maybe I would need to work on someones stupid ass Mac and need to write a file to said NTFS drive - OH WAIT CAN'T EF'IN DO THAT!
/rant

You could probably use ext2 on the hard drive - it can be configured to be readable and writable in Windows. It's similar to FAT32 but doesn't have the limit on file size.

[Q] Best file xfer to phone

So I spent several hours trying to get Wifi Direct to work only to finally read that it will killed by Asus. Sucks.
I'd like to easily, quickly transfer files between my S3 and my TF700. i have the keyboard dock but it doesn't appear there is a way to dock the phone as a mass storage device. I don't want to disassemble the phone to move the sd card around. It would be nice to have something that worked, quickly. Ideally, I'll be moving video files that can be 1GB or more.
Thanks.

Since the S3 is ICS+, USB Mass Storage protocol is not available by default (i.e., on a stock ROM). I use FilePush or DropBox. Less than ideal, but it'll have to do. A lot of people in here are fans of AirDroid.

thanks, I'll give em a try. I found an app finally last night called Software Data Cable that creates a push style network. It seems to do the job but I'll look up the others.
I use custom roms on everything, does anyone know of one that has the drivers/whatnot to allow the tf700 to host the phone in a mass storage like capacity?

Your best bet is the S3 development forum. In here, only a fraction will have this combo and they might not check in that regularly. Any modded-in USB MSP support should be mentioned in the ROM's description over there.
EDIT: typo.

[Q] File beam external hardrive

So I recently discovered the awesomeness that is Twonky... So while beaming a movie to my xbox, it dawned on me... Could I usb my external hard drive to my gs3 and beam the movies on that to the xbox? Anybody ever tried this and have any ideas or tips to make this work?

You need a powered hub to provide enough power to spin the hard drive, the S3 can't push that much back out.
You need a fat32 filesystem on the hard drive - android can't see ntfs if coming from windows base.
The results become more wonky the larger the drive.
Mass media on a fat32 filesystem is not so fun, especially video.

That was a very well thought out and precise answer. So my follow up will be, any way to make it work? Or any better ideas to pull the video files from the hard drive?
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda app-developers app

I've been using one of these: Seagate Wireless HDD
...but haven't had a chance to use it with the S3 yet. I did just get the new version of their app for it ( you don't need it, makes it easier though).
The way it works is the HDD creates its own wifi network and then you connect to that. Downside to this is you lose wifi internet while talking to the HDD.
Fantastic to have 500 gigs of immediately available storage in my pocket. The battery is decent even today and I got it right around launch.
First generation of self-contained wireless storage, so I expected it to be a lot more buggy and hit-or-miss then it is.
I had issues streaming video to tv on my last device, but there were issues with that beyond anything that may or may not have been caused by the device or it's app. Mostly gingerbread and htc's take on it being the problem.
Having installed the app on the S3, and just updated to the JB OTA, i'm looking forward to playing with it and using the MHL out to my tuner.
----
Otherwise, though, I don't have any video game consoles, so i'm kinda in the dark about how or what happens when you communicate with something like an xbox - also haven't heard of twonky before this thread and haven't looked it up.
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I would absolutely love MHL and OTG in one OEM cable. That would give OTG with it's own power and maybe allow dropping the powered hub from required stuff to drag around with you. Who knows when or if we'll get it, if anyone's involved in making that happen beyond the general consensus of everyone wanting it.
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I am curious about the best way to manage a video collection and in it's presentation. I have a ton of video from digital cameras and android devices over the last decade. I'd love to be able to casually present it on displays I come across at residences and such. The whole "bring a bag full of adapters and cables" bit precludes it happening a lot.
The S3 really opens up the use of the memory card as a memory card, what with the internal SD being a safe haven for your apps data so you don't break them when you swap cards. This makes it finally useful to carry a handful of sdcards with different stuff on it.
I have a 64 gig card in my 32 gig S3, so that's covered me on the video i've taken - however - I am all for learning how to make it work from non-local storage (like a hard drive, or the wireless one I have).
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Every step like bringing the data into the device with an sdcard, or having the hard drive be wireless or whatever like that is a cheater step, though. The end goal would be to be able to utilize any random usb hard drive you came across - so if your friend has a hard drive with video on it, how do get that in your hand and make the S3 present that video to the display in front of you both?
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I am not sure when I can get around to playing with the wireless HDD and video output, but sometime over the next few weeks is a likely time frame for my curiosity to make time to find out. I'll see about finding this thread to toss some details about how it went when I get the chance. Meantime, that is only one avenue to goal - what others can we come up with?
Edit - also the most recent firmware claims to be able to allow wifi internet access and access to the drive at the same time, so maybe the biggest turnoff was handled. Now really can't wait to find time to try it out.

Expanding storage

Right now I'm playing with expanding the storage for stuff not necessarily related to apps. While I can get the majority of my media through streaming (via a media server), there are some things that I need more space for.
I have a USB hub connected via a USB OTG cable as I also plan to use my Logitech F710 (maybe multiple if it works). I have confirmed my USB flash drives work fine. Note that I'm referring to USB flash drives, not USB card readers (they work a bit differently).
exFAT: so far, no go (some Android devices support this, apparently not the NPlayer)
FAT32: works great, but the larger the drive, the less storage efficiency (I'm working with a 64gb drive), and it has a hard limit on storage size (128gb) and file size (2gb)
NTFS: read only
EXT2: does not work
So it looks like if you are using a large storage device, and if it works, ext2 will be the best option. For you Windows users, this can bring complications due to lack of native support. There's ext2fsd but you can't format a drive with it, only read/write.
If EXT2 works as I've seen with my past usage with Android, this gives you the option to get some pretty large storage expansion with decent efficiency. FAT32 has some pretty harsh limitations. With 512gb USB flash drives in existence, if you want to go large, FAT32 may not be an option.
Edit: updated state of ext2
I suspect these may be problems with the app being used. To extend beyond this, it appears I may need root. The end result is if you want a volume larger than 128gb, you're going to be read-only. If you want read/write on a large volume (larger than, say, 32gb) you're going to have poor storage efficiency.
So now we wait for the hacking to get better storage support!

nimdae said:
Right now I'm playing with expanding the storage for stuff not necessarily related to apps. While I can get the majority of my media through streaming (via a media server), there are some things that I need more space for.
I have a USB hub connected via a USB OTG cable as I also plan to use my Logitech F710 (maybe multiple if it works). I have confirmed my USB flash drives work fine. Note that I'm referring to USB flash drives, not USB card readers (they work a bit differently).
exFAT: so far, no go (some Android devices support this, apparently not the NPlayer)
FAT32: works great, but the larger the drive, the less storage efficiency (I'm working with a 64gb drive), and it has a hard limit on storage size (128gb) and file size (2gb)
NTFS: read only
EXT2: still formatting the drive, will update with results
So it looks like if you are using a large storage device, and if it works, ext2 will be the best option. For you Windows users, this can bring complications due to lack of native support. There's ext2fsd but you can't format a drive with it, only read/write.
If EXT2 works as I've seen with my past usage with Android, this gives you the option to get some pretty large storage expansion with decent efficiency. FAT32 has some pretty harsh limitations. With 512gb USB flash drives in existence, if you want to go large, FAT32 may not be an option.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for testing the formats. Once we have root, we'll be able to have the NP recognize the external storage everywhere with StickMount and, with something like the Xposed module "OBB on SD" (or any number of other methods of mounting android space to external) you'll be able to install a ton of games/etc to the external drive where you have unlimited space. The 8gb limit in the NP still sucks, but once we have root that'll be largely mitigated if not moot for most users.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/xposed/modules/mod-obb-sd-v0-1-t2884004

Thanks for the info, mate.
If it reads NTFS does it means I can load my HDD via windows and just plug and play on nexus player?

Has anyone tried Towelroot
Elrondolio said:
Thanks for testing the formats. Once we have root, we'll be able to have the NP recognize the external storage everywhere with StickMount and, with something like the Xposed module "OBB on SD" (or any number of other methods of mounting android space to external) you'll be able to install a ton of games/etc to the external drive where you have unlimited space. The 8gb limit in the NP still sucks, but once we have root that'll be largely mitigated if not moot for most users.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/xposed/modules/mod-obb-sd-v0-1-t2884004
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ordered last week should in my hands on the first week of December. I have a 2T drive that would great if that works. I will hold on to my FireTv which it has been rooted using the 2T drive.

Keep in mind that if you have a bus powered hard drive, it will likely require a powered USB hub to work. I doubt the OTG port will provide enough power, but I could be wrong. I have a USB 3 drive I could test later.
Yes, if you have a NTFS formatted drive, you can put stuff on it with your computer and read it with the NP. As long as reading that something doesn't try to modify something there, it should work fine.
Note to self: Use a linux machine to format ext2. Seems these windows programs are really really slow at it.

So I'm thinking I need to re-assess the above results as I suspect ES File Explorer is to blame for things expected to work, but not working. It will not work with EXT2 and requests to use either FAT32 or NTFS.
I'll have to do more digging.
Edit: Tested several file managers and was unable to get any further. To get EXT2 I suspect it needs to be mountable somewhere in /, which is what I believe stickmount takes care of for us (I could be wrong). But this requires root.

I'm assuming that scenario would work just fine, however I can't test it to be certain.

Drewg over in the kodi forums posted a manual way of correctly mounting usb storage into the / filesystem. Here's a bit of that and a link:
Code:
mknod /dev/sda1 b 8 1
mkdir /mnt/obb/mnt
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/obb/mnt
You could, of course, choose what dir you mount the storage in, its the mknod that is key. This also assumes your usb storage is being recognized as sda1 already.
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=206515&pid=1832231#pid1832231

Anyone test this. .

Elrondolio said:
Drewg over in the kodi forums posted a manual way of correctly mounting usb storage into the / filesystem. Here's a bit of that and a link:
Code:
mknod /dev/sda1 b 8 1
mkdir /mnt/obb/mnt
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/obb/mnt
You could, of course, choose what dir you mount the storage in, its the mknod that is key. This also assumes your usb storage is being recognized as sda1 already.
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=206515&pid=1832231#pid1832231
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll have to see if I can do this with ext2. vfat has the same limitations as fat32 as that is the spec it implements.

Rooted & Installed Stickmount.. still unable to access USB files
Before I was rooted, I tried exFAT, NTFS, and FAT32.. but the USB would show in ES File explorer but won't open. Now I've rooted and installed Stickmount. When I connect the USB, it mounts it ("/sdcard/UsbStorage/sda"). But I'm still not able to access it. Any suggestions or solutions if you guys have rooted your device?
EDIT: I tried again using a 32GB USB Drive (exFAT) and StickMount mounted and I was able to access its contents using ES File Explorer and it also showed up in MX Player. I was able to play HD movies through it with no problem. Working perfectly. (I had to sideload stickmount, as it can't be installed through web play store).

I'm planning to experiment with this today. I just need to get the stickmount apk transferred over as the play store lists it as incompatible. Ext2 might work best for this method as I'm not sure the stock kernel has exfat nor ntfs support and I'm biased against using fat32.

It appears root, stickmount + foldermount 2.7 works fine and lets you move games to OTG-USB. I moved MC4 easily enough and it worked although it couldnt create the mc4 directory on the stick so it stuck it directly in an obb dir I created, so you might want to create your directories first.
But MC4 definitely appears to be working. Im going to try bards tale next.
Edit Bards Tale doesnt seem to work and I attempted to move MC4 into a cleaner directory and I cant get it to work again, so I am going to download its data and try again...
Edit2: now MC4will not work. Pin turns green showing everything to be linked properly but its not working now

volwrath said:
It appears root, stickmount + foldermount 2.7 works fine and lets you move games to OTG-USB. I moved MC4 easily enough and it worked although it couldnt create the mc4 directory on the stick so it stuck it directly in an obb dir I created, so you might want to create your directories first.
But MC4 definitely appears to be working. Im going to try bards tale next.
Edit Bards Tale doesnt seem to work and I attempted to move MC4 into a cleaner directory and I cant get it to work again, so I am going to download its data and try again...
Edit2: now MC4will not work. Pin turns green showing everything to be linked properly but its not working now
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your updates. I am away on business but am very interested in this aspect of the NP. Hopefully you can get it working and others can help troubleshoot. There are a few different apps that enable this functionality once rooted, but I'm sure all of them have some teething issues under the new Lollipop. Good luck.

volwrath said:
It appears root, stickmount + foldermount 2.7 works fine and lets you move games to OTG-USB. I moved MC4 easily enough and it worked although it couldnt create the mc4 directory on the stick so it stuck it directly in an obb dir I created, so you might want to create your directories first.
But MC4 definitely appears to be working. Im going to try bards tale next.
Edit Bards Tale doesnt seem to work and I attempted to move MC4 into a cleaner directory and I cant get it to work again, so I am going to download its data and try again...
Edit2: now MC4will not work. Pin turns green showing everything to be linked properly but its not working now
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What filesystem did you use?

nimdae said:
What filesystem did you use?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I kept it simple and used a 32gig flash drive fat32

I can confirm stickmount works with fat32. I'm working out how to get ext2 or ext4 working. ext2 would be preferred for a flash drive but I've not had luck yet. I plan to try ext4, but given the fact ext2 didn't work, I don't have high hopes. I think It's an issue with permissions and I might have to futz with that to make it work.

Good to know stickmount is working well. Have either of you attempted foldermount, obb on sd, etc and had success yet? Thanks for the updates.

Elrondolio said:
Thanks for your updates. I am away on business but am very interested in this aspect of the NP. Hopefully you can get it working and others can help troubleshoot. There are a few different apps that enable this functionality once rooted, but I'm sure all of them have some teething issues under the new Lollipop. Good luck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I might switch to another app tomorrow, but I sent the foldermount author an email describing the problem. I feel pretty confident it is simply teething issues as it did work for a small amount of time.

Elrondolio said:
Good to know stickmount is working well. Have either of you attempted foldermount, obb on sd, etc and had success yet? Thanks for the updates.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had some issues with stickmount. It works, but I wouldn't say "well". At one point it kept freezing and getting into a bad state but since reinstalling it I haven't had any further trouble. Caveat emptor.