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[Q] Best file system for external hard drives

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?

formatting a 4tb drive to read on Android

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.

Android 7.1 on a Le Potato SBC Resizing Partitions

Hello everyone.
I have a Single Board Computer called Le Potato made by Libre Computer Project.
Specs: S905x SOC
Cortex-A53 @ 1.512GHz
2GB DDR3 Ram
ARM Mali-450 @ 750MHz
SD card for O.S
They offer an Android 7.1 Image to flash on a SD Card. So basically like a Generic Android TV Box.
I have a 16GB and 32 GB SD card and when i flash the image using ETCHER in Windows 10 it always leaves 7 to 22 GB unallocated, it only gives me 1.9GB of app space, and no matter what i try i can't seem to resize the right partition to have more app space. Any thoughts would be helpful. I'm using Gparted in Ubuntu to attempt to resize the partitons.
Thank you

Did you ever figure it out? I'm in the same situation right now.

Has anyone come up with a solution?
I also saw the same thing; a 32gb SD card was used and the image file was flashed via Etcher on an Arch Linux distro. Once I booted the potato, 1.9gb available space. digging through the storage settings, I saw that the system storage (OS i guess) was using the entire SD card. I also saw a few issues where some core app kept crashing when I went into different parts of the settings menu (but it still worked) and at one point I saw a different settings menu all together. This is in the MBOX variant.
Seems to me that the image file allocates the entire storage space to the system partition (just like a phone) and whoever built this did not account for user storage, missed some files, didn't input code correctly, etc. currently I unpacked the image file and am digging through to see what's going on; it's got to be all within the coding.
Update:
looking into the fstab.amlogic file currently. this is where the image creates partitions. sense there can only be 4 primary partitions, i think this is where the issue lies. not allocating enough space in the /Data partition as internal storage...

How do I encrypt nvme SSD which is an external storage for my development board

Hello,
I am working on a project(on android 7.1) where I want to protect my data stored in external nvme SSD. I came across encryption methods which android support (FDE and FBE) but I did not find anything related to external block device.
How do I encrypt my SSD just like android does for eMMC?

Can I use my smartphone storage for both Android OS and Windows OS?

Can we ditch the HDD/SSD of PC and use smartphone storage instead?
Is it possible to create an NTFS partition in the smartphone storage that will be used as a bootable external HDD/SSD drive that can boot a PC?

Try this:
How to Recover Your PC Using an Android Device
PC won't boot? No other computer available to make a recovery USB? Here's how to create a bootable USB in Android without a PC.
www.makeuseof.com

I'm talking about using the phone's storage as the main storage also of a PC for daily use, not just for a one-time boot.

You would first have to find an old phone that has the ability to run mass storage. Then you can experiment.

You can install a Windows Emulator on your Phone.​Look inside here:
2 Best Windows Emulator for Android Phones (Working) 2023
Looking for Best Windows emulator for Android phones? Check out these 2 best Windows PC emulators for Android. (100% Working)
techonation.com
Why not on Windows PC install the Windows Subsystem for Android ( WSA ) and run Android OS natively directly on PC?

The point is to combine the phone storage and the PC storage to one storage, to be able to manage your data in one place.
Dividing the storage to (at least) 3 partitions:
1. Android OS
2. Data (Documents, Music, Video...)
3. Windows OS
You don't need to manage your Data twice.
All your Data and changes is available to you at home and on the road.
You don't need Cloud or Sync solutions.
Offline.

What you want to get achieved simply is impossible IMO: in any case a server as MITM-machine is needed.
Only to have mentioned it: both the Windows OS and the Android OS store files in incompatible filesystems.

Didn't know Windows can installed on portable drives... I feel this is mainly a Windows question. I remember there was such funny thing BartPE.

Stamimail said:
Can we ditch the HDD/SSD of PC and use smartphone storage instead?
Is it possible to create an NTFS partition in the smartphone storage that will be used as a bootable external HDD/SSD drive that can boot a PC?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I understand your question, try the Drivedroid app, it can be used to make an Android device function as a bootable drive to boot PC from the Android device.
Also, there are some methods to dual boot on Android.

I'm talking about a situation where everything happens simultaneously:
1. First partition serves the phone to run Android OS. (The phone works normally. You can have a call on the phone)
2. The second partition serves both the phone and the computer, for User Data.
3. The third partition serves the computer to run Windows OS.

@Stamimail please answer yourself first
3. have you ever installed any Windows on external usb hard disk/ssd drive? Is that even possible? Idk

Yes, a long time ago.
Also a short internet search shows that it is possible.

I see there such thing Windows to go.
https://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/index.html
probably easiest workaround is rooted android device with MicroSD card provided as UMS.
[APP][ROOT] USB MASS STORAGE Enabler v1.6
This app is to enable Mass Storage Mode for mounting your Memory Card as a USB Drive in Computer from your rooted device [Android 4.0+].. It does not mount internal storage, and it will not work if your device doesn't have External Memory Card...
forum.xda-developers.com
or try Drivedroid.
[APP][2.2+] DriveDroid - host ISO/IMG files to boot your PC from
DriveDroid allows you to boot your PC from ISO/IMG files stored on your phone. This is ideal for trying Linux distributions or always having a rescue-system on the go... without the need to burn different CDs or USB pendrives. The paid version of...
forum.xda-developers.com

In further reading, I get the impression that the big problem is that internal storage always has better performance than external storage.
I don't know why external storage can't be made to be as good as internal.
So the question now is:
If people decide it's a good idea, is it technically possible to implement this idea (that phone storage will replace computer storage)?

you can repartition userdata partition with gdisk and create another partition. this partition can be provided as UMS.
However, windows is known for dancing rumba on disk, you probably won't have much fun till emmc is weared-out.