External hard drive transfers to this Tablet

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-DroidIsDNA-

Senior Member
Jan 14, 2013
986
343
rochester
Can you connect an external hard drive to this tablet and transfer files such as movies, music, and pictures back and forth? I only want to keep 10 movies on the tab at once, and switch back and forth.

Is it simply possible if it is exfat or fat32 with a usb OTG cable?
 

rockjock2020

Senior Member
Oct 1, 2007
162
24
Depends on the hd. Some uncovered drives don't work and some do depending on their requirements. I use a 64 gig thumb drive just fine with an eBay otg cable I paid 7.00 for

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk
 

spexwood

Senior Member
Feb 13, 2011
1,339
432
I have a 1TB Western Digital My Passport (a USB-powered drive) formatted as FAT32 + an OTG cable. It works perfectly fine, but not if the drive is NTFS. If rooted (which I am), you can supposedly use NTFS with the aid of some apps, but I havent tried it personally (worked on my old Acer A500 though, so I cant see why it wouldnt on our tablet).

EDIT: I just tried a thumb drive formatted as NTFS and the Android system wont recognize it, as suspected. Unfortunately, I tried 2 free NTFS mounting apps from Play Store and neither worked. It's still theoretically possible, but maybe not for 4.3 or just 4.3 for now. As I said, I did it all the time on my old tablet, but it was running 4.0.3 ICS, not 4.3 JB.
(I also used to use an APK found somewhere here on XDA. The app wasnt on Play and I cant find it now. Search around on Google and you may be able to find it or something similar.)

Sent from my SM-P600 using Tapatalk
 
Last edited:

ultramag69

Senior Member
Nov 6, 2007
5,994
1,080
Waratah
I have a 1TB Western Digital My Passport (a USB-powered drive) formatted as FAT32 + an OTG cable. It works perfectly fine, but not if the drive is NTFS. If rooted (which I am), you can supposedly use NTFS with the aid of some apps, but I havent tried it personally (worked on my old Acer A500 though, so I cant see why it wouldnt on our tablet).

EDIT: I just tried a thumb drive formatted as NTFS and the Android system wont recognize it, as suspected. Unfortunately, I tried 2 free NTFS mounting apps from Play Store and neither worked. It's still theoretically possible, but maybe not for 4.3 or just 4.3 for now. As I said, I did it all the time on my old tablet, but it was running 4.0.3 ICS, not 4.3 JB.
(I also used to use an APK found somewhere here on XDA. The app wasnt on Play and I cant find it now. Search around on Google and you may be able to find it or something similar.)

Sent from my SM-P600 using Tapatalk

Only app I found that will allow an NTFS drive to be read is USB Stick Plugin for TC... It only works for total commander however and is a commercial app on the playstore - you need to pay around $2 for it....
Works well though....
 

funfun99999

Senior Member
Sep 28, 2012
163
26
I have a 1.5TB Toshiba usb3 (USB-powered drive) formatted as exfat + OTG cable works perfect