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[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 =)
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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).
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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.
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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?
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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.

Connecting Android phone to transformer

Hi guys,
I have the asus to USB adapter for my transformer. I'm trying to plug in my galaxy s2 as a mass storage DEVICE. I want to be able to transfer files between devices without a computer in between. Bluetooth is just way too slow and fickle. However it recognises the phone and shows the sd card (not internal storage) but if I try and access the folders it says file not found or something.
Anyone made this work or have any other ideas? Sometimes I'm on the road and need a quick way to move large video files from phone to tablet. All the sync apps seem way too slow and use heaps of data I dont have, as free wifi is hard to find in new Zealand.
Thanks in advance
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium

I hope I'm understanding u but forget the USB process altogether and use 1 micro SD card. Using a file manger on your sgs2 u can place the video files onto the micro SD and then physically take out the card and place it in your tf. Then use a file manager on your tf to either access it and or copy the files onto your internal tf memory.
You may not be able to access your micro SD card from the My Files app on your sgs2. U will need to download a file manager app from the market. Ex. Astro file manager.
U will be able to access the micro SD card from the default file manager app on the tf.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using XDA App

Yeah I have thought about this. It seems like a messy way to do it though, as I have a micro sd in each, so is a lot of shuffling (and rebooting in the case of the gs2 because of the location of the sd slot). I was thinking though as the Gs2 can be mounted as USB storage, there should be some way to access it on the transformer ? I do wish google would enable an easier way of us sharing files between devices, excluding nfc of course.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using xda premium

Either way...there is going to be a drawback to any method you use to end up with the same result. I use the micro sd card / file manager method all the time and have no problems nor does it seem inefficient or messy to me. This is basically the same process as using a flash drive to transfer a large file from one pc to the other.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using XDA App

quick and cheeky answer- get a keyboard dock.
i have the SGS2 aswell and all i do is use the phones usb cable and plug it into the USB port on the dock, hey presto it all works fine.
you could try to connect to the tablet over direct wifi too- the SGS2 has direct wifi and only 1 needs it to get it working, you could then stream the video files to the tablet.
have a look here too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giJXF5pIITc
maybe PM nztechfreak on xda or his facebook page, there isnt a thing that guy doesnt know about android phones and tablets and he is very helpful indeed

You can also use the 'Samba Filesharing' app from the market place. Your phone will show up in 'My Computer/Networks' and you can read/write directly to/from the SD card.

You could probably set up some sort of ad-hoc wireless connection between the two devices, it would most likely be more reliable than bluetooth which I never got to work.

I use a NAS to copy files from my phone to my transformer.
I use ES file explorer to access the NAS from both devices, so they have a shared storage to copy to/from.
I haven't tried samba sharing of the SD card, but that sounds like a good idea too. saves one step.

Mount Xoom as USB Drive

I am running the Team EOS ICS ROM. Is there anyway to mount my Xoom's internal memory or SD card as a logical drive to my Windows 7 PC?

sure,
download the motorola usb drivers from motorola and plug your xoom into your pc via USB. Both the internal and SD card will show in Windows Explorer.

Its showing in Windows Explorer, but unlike other Android devices it is not being assigned a logical drive letter when Windows knows about it.

I think your problem is because of the way they have the rom setup. If you look in the settings for storage than select the "action" menu" (top right). There are only two options which is media device and camera device. On other roms, an option is presented to connect as "mass storage" which is what you are looking for.
So, the short answer is that in the current iteration of the rom, what you are looking for does not exist.

Mounting as mass storage is a depricated technology never to return. In fact, Android devices with external storage are being depricated. It has to do with the problems associated with having unmounted storage while android attempts to use that storage.

bigrushdog said:
Mounting as mass storage is a depricated technology never to return. In fact, Android devices with external storage are being depricated. It has to do with the problems associated with having unmounted storage while android attempts to use that storage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd like to run a file syncing app to copy the files from both the internal storage and SD card thats automated when I leave the xoom in its dock overnight. Is there a way of getting windows to see it as a drive with a letter?

integramodder said:
I'd like to run a file syncing app to copy the files from both the internal storage and SD card thats automated when I leave the xoom in its dock overnight. Is there a way of getting windows to see it as a drive with a letter?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
depends on what ROM you are using and if they have added the mass storage feature, which as noted right above your post has been deprecated by Android/Google...so unless you are running maybe an ICS rom or there is some app in the Play Store that will give you that functionality, then i would say no

install app to otg

Install app to otg 1st you will need root 2nd you will need 2 apps foldermount and stickmount once you have those open stickmount and mount the otg then open foldermount hit app analyzer on the left side then choose ur app you want to install to otg hit create pair then go to destination and the path should look like this /storage/emulated/0/usbStorage/sd1 and there you have it

thanks for the tip. i was hoping to do this with CIFS when a compatible kernel comes out. i just hate having only one port for charge and OTG. if they find a way to charge and use OTG then i'll kick myself for paying $170 for a wifi hd!

So for example, If I wanted to install Asphalt to my meenova card reader with a 16gb microsd . In would be able to just plug in the card reader whenever I want to play the game?

yep, should be just as easy as that. there'll be a pretty big hit in file transfer/load times vs the internal storage, but you get tons of extra space!

madsquabbles said:
yep, should be just as easy as that. there'll be a pretty big hit in file transfer/load times vs the internal storage, but you get tons of extra space!
Click to expand...
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my only issue now is I get a constant stickmount notification even after I've removed my sd

dom2684 said:
my only issue now is I get a constant stickmount notification even after I've removed my sd
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i haven't had any problem yet. i'm using a 128GB USB 3.0 PNY NTFS [/COLOR]formated usb stick and a 32GB USB 2.0 sandisk stick. are you unmounting before removing?
edit: whoops, i lied. both exFat formatted.

Write access to external storage?

Hi, does anyone have writing to usb storage (given a hub) working? I've been trying, and while I can read files from the root directories of all attached external volumes, I get denied on write.

The CCwGTV firmware is lacking the Android "Storage Access Framework" and probably other features needed to access that stuff. It DOES however allow moving installed apps to a USB connected storage device. (I bought a 80 GB SATA SSD got 10 dollars and hooked it up to the HyperDrive USB hub I bought for the CCwGTV. Any files I'd want to read and write to I use a HDD attached to my Asus router setup through network shared folders (effectively turning it into a a NAS/home cloud storage.
Note that the USB link speed is only 2.0, so I'd try get a cheap SSD (SATA2 ones go pretty cheap plus a sata to USB adapter, the app load times are as fast as the internal storage with all that set up. Good luck mate! It's the best setup I can achieve and it was worth the time I put into testing it. Reply if you need any further help or clarification.