Hello,
So i got my 3.5 external hard drive working with my Note, but I want to know the best file system. I formatted the drive on my mac to an EXFAT drive, but that doesn't work well on my tablet: it says it's only a 198 mb drive instead of a 1 TB drive. NTFS doesn't work at all. When i format the drive on my note, it can't be read on my mac. So basically I want a file system which works on mac, windows and android without the need for extra software and it should allow files of over 32 GB (unlike FAT). Which is the file system i should chose?
Related
Hey,
Got this 8GB SD, which serves my son's Android phone (Lenovo S920, but this is off topic).
Now, for some reason, this SD is divided to two DRIVES (not partitions, drives), a 3GB drive and a 5GB drive. The phone treats the 3GB drive as its first and default drive.
Now, I want to reformat the SD in a way it'll include a single 8GB drive. Then I can repartition it the way I like.
Problem is that I couldn't find a single tool which does that. Whenever I try partitioning the SD with any of these tools, it detects 2 separate drives/devices, on which it can perform any partitioning function, but all within the drives. No tool offered the option to erase a drive or merge drives. I could also do with a tool that turns the SD blank or return it to its factory settings. I have tried Windows, Android or Linux tools with card readers or with the SD inserted in my phone (MSC mode) without any luck.
Would appreciate any help here.
I have a 2.5in 1TB external hard drive, but when I connect it to my P3100, it gives me the "empty storage or unsupported file system" error.
It is not the problem of the drive requiring more power than the tab provides, because I am using the Y cable to supply additional power to the drive.
After searching and reading up on the problem, I understand that Android does not support NTFS file system. So, I was wondering if I formatted my drive to the ExFAT file system, will my tab read it then??
By the way, my tab is rooted and running Adis SungsonicHD V-7 ROM at the moment.
Thanks
ExFAT is also a proprietary Windows format. You'd need to format to FAT32 and even then you'll prolly have to make more than one partition to use it all. Just Google for applications that format external drives to FAT32.
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Hi everybody,
I have a question about file system on external SD cards for an Android Smartphone. I searched already in the internet for a solution but I did not find anything what helped me.
Basically my problem is simple: I want to copy files from my Windows PC (Windows 7) to the external SD card of my Android Smartphone (Android 5). That is simple: connect the Smartphone with USB cable to the PC, then the Smartphone appears as device in Windows Explorer, so I can easily copy files. But when the files are larger than 4 GB, then it doesn't work, because the SD card is formatted with FAT32 file system, which does not support files > 4 GB. This is clear.
One option is to split large files into smaller files (e.g. using 7-zip), but for several reasons, that is not a usable way and I tried it, it doesn't always really work in a reliable way.
So I would like to copy files > 4 GB to my Smarphone and informed about different file systems and made some experiments (by plugging the SD card into the SD card slot of my Windows PC and formatting it). Here are the results:
- NTFS: Formatted: On Windows, using MiniTool Partition Wizard. Writable on Windows: yes. On the Smartphone: "SD card is blank or has unsupported file system."
- exFAT: Formatted: On Windows, using Windows Explorer. Writable on Windows: yes. On the Smartphone: "SD card is blank or has unsupported file system."
- ext2: Formatted: On Windows, using MiniTool Partition Wizard. Writable on Windows: no. Smartphone: Not tried, because not writable on Windows.
Then I installed an ext2 driver on Windows (Paragon ExtFS), but when I tried to read the SD card in my Smartphone again, it still did not work. It's hopeless. Seems that there is no file system which can easily be read/ written by Windows and Android and doesn't have the 4 GB file size limit.
Does anybody know which file systm is suitable for my needs?
Thanks a lot and with best regards,
Bernd
Hi All,
I'm trying to get my new 4tb drive to work with my android device. I know that out of the box it requires FAT32 to be read, and no I am not interested in rooting my device to install drivers to support other options. I already have another 4tb working :
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HXAV0X6/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
this drive formatted just fine using the guiformat tool to fat32.
however the recent drive does not accept a fat32 format:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0196J3UZ2/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
gives me a format error and restricts me to a 2tb volume.
I believe the problem for this is that the first drive is a raid0 format with 2 drives built in. The second drive is a single 4tb, slower but more "dependable" (and also $70 cheaper).
I'm sure my success with the first drive is that the fat32 partition is able to create > 2tb because the physical devices are split between 2 2tb drives, though this does not make a ton of sense to me.
Regardless, what are my options here for the second drive? Again, i'm not interested in rooting my device. 2 partitions are ok, but i've experimented w/that and found that the second partition is ignored in the android file system. Did some reading and found that part1 needs to be vfat, and part2 needs to be fat32, AND you need to possibly be on root and run a special script to even mount that setup. I'm not interested in all that, i just want to be able to turn my device on and have the drive mounted w/o root.
All that said, what is the simplest solution for me to set up this drive to be read on my Samsung and s2 tablet devices w/o root? Is FAT32 the only solution, and if so, can i some how FORCE this partition style on my 4tb drive? I read somewhere that a Linux boot can handle this, though i don't even know where to begin with that being a windows man.
Please help!
anyone have an idea? dont want to spend an extra 70 bucks just because i cant format a drive to fat32 ;/
p64impp said:
Hi All,
I'm trying to get my new 4tb drive to work with my android device. I know that out of the box it requires FAT32 to be read, and no I am not interested in rooting my device to install drivers to support other options. I already have another 4tb working :
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HXAV0X6/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
this drive formatted just fine using the guiformat tool to fat32.
however the recent drive does not accept a fat32 format:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0196J3UZ2/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
gives me a format error and restricts me to a 2tb volume.
I believe the problem for this is that the first drive is a raid0 format with 2 drives built in. The second drive is a single 4tb, slower but more "dependable" (and also $70 cheaper).
I'm sure my success with the first drive is that the fat32 partition is able to create > 2tb because the physical devices are split between 2 2tb drives, though this does not make a ton of sense to me.
Regardless, what are my options here for the second drive? Again, i'm not interested in rooting my device. 2 partitions are ok, but i've experimented w/that and found that the second partition is ignored in the android file system. Did some reading and found that part1 needs to be vfat, and part2 needs to be fat32, AND you need to possibly be on root and run a special script to even mount that setup. I'm not interested in all that, i just want to be able to turn my device on and have the drive mounted w/o root.
All that said, what is the simplest solution for me to set up this drive to be read on my Samsung and s2 tablet devices w/o root? Is FAT32 the only solution, and if so, can i some how FORCE this partition style on my 4tb drive? I read somewhere that a Linux boot can handle this, though i don't even know where to begin with that being a windows man.
Please help!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android likes ext4 more than fat32. You should try with it, but it is a bit problematic as windows does not support ext4 at all. You need to get a live Ubuntu USB or something and you should be running linux in a matter of minutes (it won't uninstall Linux unless you explicitly tell it to)
From what I understand if your drive has mbr it is limited to 2 TB. Whereas gpt can exceed 2 TB. You will want to convert to gpt. If you search google there are articles that go step by step. I experienced a similar issue with my 4 TB Seagate external usb 3.0 drive. I deleted my partitions using a Windows computer and reinitialized the drive for gpt. Afterwards I formatted it in exfat.
Hello xda-community!
I'm looking for a way to copy a HDD to another HDD (as backup). The thing is, some partitions are VeraCrypt-encrypted which got a RAW filesystem.
Is it possible, to copy all partitions to another HDD with those "pseudo" data? If not, then I need to copy everything manually...
(Why am I doing this?: I'd like to keep my encrypted files encrypted, I'm kinda a paranoid person which appreciates any way to protect my privacy)
My real name is like a ghost on the internet. Nonexistent
This is how my HDDs are built up:
2x WD My Passport Ultra (4TB)
Source HDD: 3725.87 GB
Partitions:
- 653.86 GB -> unused (NTFS)
- 512.00 GB -> VC-encrypted (RAW)
- 1024.00 GB -> NTFS
- 256.00 GB -> NTFS
- 512.00 GB -> NTFS
- 512.00 GB -> VC-encrypted (RAW)
- 256.00 GB -> NTFS
Backup HDD: 3725.99 GB
Thank you very much for your answers!
Edit:
I found out about mirroring disks, but apparently windows doesn't allow me to convert my external HDD into a dynamic disk...
Edit 2:
Yup, it's not possible to change it. Learned more about RAID 1 and why it shouldn't be used as backup (although it's quite good for a last moment backup).
However it would be great, if there was a program, which could just do read the changes on a drive and copy them on another drive.
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