USB Mass Storage - Galaxy S III General (US Carriers)

Does this phone not support USB mass storage mode?
I went through the option and I couldn't find a way to do standard USB mode. Only media player or digital camera mode.
Media player mode is close, but it's a lot less standard than mass storage mode.

I just use MTP, mounts the internal and SD card as drives in windows. Dont know what that difference between that and USB mass storage is

altitude909 said:
I just use MTP, mounts the internal and SD card as drives in windows. Dont know what that difference between that and USB mass storage is
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
MTP support under linux really blows, which is why I still use USB MassStorage mode. I'll give MTP another chance, though, because I've upgraded Fedora since last trying it.
The main differences between the two are that MTP allows your phone to hide the underlying filesystem of the storage (fat32, exfat, ext4, ...), and makes it transparently available to your PC while the phone is still able to use it too, whereas in Mass Storage mode each device (internal & external) gets mounted as an actual filesystem (that your OS has to understand).
Mass Storage is much faster too.

When the phone is plugged in, you can click on connected as media device in notifications. It use to be that you can disable MTP this way, but when I select to turn it off, the MTP box it stays checked. I don't think there is a way to disable until we get custom ROMs. We need the USB Mass Storage option back under settings>more settings

Yeah, normally you can go > settings > storage > menu button and select your USB mode from there... This does nothing on the the GS3.

nakedninja42 said:
When the phone is plugged in, you can click on connected as media device in notifications. It use to be that you can disable MTP this way, but when I select to turn it off, the MTP box it stays checked. I don't think there is a way to disable until we get custom ROMs. We need the USB Mass Storage option back under settings>more settings
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Click to collapse
There's a two-line hack in the international forum that'll let you enable MassStorage mode, but it reverts back to MTP after reboots. Yeah - hopefully this'll be an option in the first batch of ROMs released.

zmore said:
There's a two-line hack in the international forum that'll let you enable MassStorage mode, but it reverts back to MTP after reboots. Yeah - hopefully this'll be an option in the first batch of ROMs released.
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Click to collapse
Interesting, I'll be looking for that. I was thinking it had to do with build.prop to stay persistent but I didn't see it in the quick glance I had.

nakedninja42 said:
Interesting, I'll be looking for that. I was thinking it had to do with build.prop to stay persistent but I didn't see it in the quick glance I had.
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Interesting.. I didn't think it would be possible, but it looks like that covers the bases - manual unmount in the phone, export the lun to USB mass storage, and then undo both at the end..
Edit: That's external SD only.. I mean, great, but do note that.
The internal sd is ext4 formatted, and I don't know if you can unmount it while the system is running (Which is why UMS mode wasn't on by default)

zmore said:
There's a two-line hack in the international forum that'll let you enable MassStorage mode, but it reverts back to MTP after reboots.
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Click to collapse
This doesn't work for me (rooted, stock ROM), nor does editing /data/property/persist.sys.usb.config directly (which makes the change permanent on an SGS2). Interestingly, USB OTG (on-the-go) does work, and it uses mass storage mode, so it's not like the phone isn't capable of it.
[Edit: neither /dev/block/vold/179:17 nor /sys/devices/platform/s3c-usbgadget/ exist on the device - does anyone know the alternatives to use?]

plaut said:
[Edit: neither /dev/block/vold/179:17 nor /sys/devices/platform/s3c-usbgadget/ exist on the device - does anyone know the alternatives to use?]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You may be able to guess at what /dev/block/vold/179:17 would be on the US variant by looking at the output of 'mount'. You may then have to cross-reference what that gives you with some sysfs info or symlinks in /dev..
s3c-usbgadget would be a feature of the quad-core Exynos SoC, based on the S3C in the name - that's a samsung chip naming convention. For the Qualcomm equivalent, the kernel source code is probably your best bet.

Thanks - looks like /dev/block/vold/179:97 is the external SD.
The only directory in /sys/devices/platform/ that contains gadget/lun0/file is msm_hsusb, but a) I'm pretty sure that's involved in hosting USB (e.g., OTG) and b) it doesn't seem to work when substituted in the relevant command. I'll keep looking....

That is one nice thing about the ICS update for the Razr, since default to mass storage mode and you can also choose MTP.
I will miss this on the Razr. I thought Android team said this will not work? Works great and just as good as with Gingerbread.

Related

[REQ] Mass storage toggle app

I have a request, I know the TP2 have native Mass storage driver (ie the MicroSD can act as a flash drive), normally this depends on the Phone detecting a PC before activiating that feature.
However, I have a MP3 player that accept USB flash drive, but plugging my phone into the player won't trigger the mass storage activiation.
Does anyone know how to toggle it manually somehow somewhere? or can write a small/quick app to do that?
Thanks in advance
The option is under All settings, connections tab, USB to PC, then Disk Drive.
Give that a go...
I use mine in my car which has a usb port that reads flash drives and just plays songs via folder selection, however it doesnt charge from it.
There is an app I use called wm5torage that should work for what you want. It toggles the usb connetion as a mass storage device. Give it a try and see if it works for you.
headshok said:
The option is under All settings, connections tab, USB to PC, then Disk Drive.
Give that a go...
I use mine in my car which has a usb port that reads flash drives and just plays songs via folder selection, however it doesnt charge from it.
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Click to collapse
Doesn't work, as I mention that depends on the Phone detecting the connection as a PC before it would activate the Mass storage feature (you can tell because the storage card disappear from file explorer) and my phone just won't detect my MP3 player as a PC

Charge only problem... I think

I'm not exactly sure this is a problem; maybe someone can help. No matter which setting I put my phone in "Charge only" or "Disk Drive" when I connect it to my Windows Vista machine it still mounts the SD card as removable storage. It also mounts the internal storage as well but I am not able to explore that (just says insert disk when I click on it).
I have rooted and flashed the custom recovery but I'm not sure that has anything to do with it. I don't remember how it acted before.
EDIT: Okay I figured something out. When I plug in the USB, no matter the setting in Settings > Connect to PC > Default Connection Type, it will always mount the SD card. However when I change the setting while its still plugged in it will mount / unmount normally. Weird.
Same issue here
I had the same problem, and traced it to doubletwist forcing a USB mount as default configuration. Start by checking that.
That's what it was! Thanks for the help.
That was my issue too. Glad you tracked it down.. was driving me nuts.
In the car dock I couldn't figure out why it kept trying to set my deck to USB Devices when I was trying to use Bluetooth streaming.
Heh. Doubletwist... I just uninstalled it.
tcpsyn said:
That was my issue too. Glad you tracked it down.. was driving me nuts.
In the car dock I couldn't figure out why it kept trying to set my deck to USB Devices when I was trying to use Bluetooth streaming.
Heh. Doubletwist... I just uninstalled it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can still keep it if you want. There is a setting in Doubletwist that is checked by default called "Auto USB drive" that you can un-check to fix this problem.

Generic USB

Is it possible to develop a compatible generic USB driver for our beloved SSGS? It would be cool to just plug in your SSGS to any PC or car stereo and get recognized without downloading the driver first. SSGS is incompatible with everything...
mass storage doesn't work for you?
Yeah was gonna say that too....
The only time I've loaded drivers was to use odin other than that I've just plugged it in??
It does'nt work with car stereo ;(
Most MP3 audio system thingy uses generic driver so... it doesn't work. Sorry, I guess it works on other PCs with the mass storage switched on but not the car radio systems or similar systems. I have a Honda Jazz/Fit - debug mode, mass storage, media player mode... don't work. It says "unsupport".
Moto Milestone is compatible with most MP3 audio system. Is there a way to extract that driver?
I'm pretty sure that is not a driver problem but something that relates to the USB-Controller in the SGS. It is a different one than the one in the Milestone/Droid and thus the driver's won't work. It also means that a "native" mass storage mode is most likely impossible
I do think the mass storage on sgs is generic mass storage like every commercial USB drive. None of my Windows machine requires special drivers to mount the partitions on PC.
Anyway, drivers are supposedly to be loaded on host, not the phone. Even if you wrote a driver which works, you will have to find ways to load into your audio system, which is likely not possible.
P.s. Upon selecting mass storage when prompted, did you pull down the notification bar and click on mount? Otherwise it would be just an unloaded drive to the host.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

[Q] Any way to get USB Mass Storage instead of MTP?

Not entirely sure what kind of process might be needed, but is it at all possible to use the older method of transferring files between a computer to an Android device (USB Mass Storage) instead of MTP?
MTP (in my experience) is... not ideal in most cases. File transfers are seemingly slower, can only do one thing at a time (I think if your transferring a file, you can't even browse other folders on the MTP device), and sometimes file transfers just get stuck for no reason. Was trying to copy over a few PDF's to my N10 and it seems to just hang randomly, had to reboot the device 4 times already (twice to just create and rename a folder).
what about the option in settings -> storage -> and tap the menu button on the top right and select USB Computer connection?
espionage724 said:
Not entirely sure what kind of process might be needed, but is it at all possible to use the older method of transferring files between a computer to an Android device (USB Mass Storage) instead of MTP?
MTP (in my experience) is... not ideal in most cases. File transfers are seemingly slower, can only do one thing at a time (I think if your transferring a file, you can't even browse other folders on the MTP device), and sometimes file transfers just get stuck for no reason. Was trying to copy over a few PDF's to my N10 and it seems to just hang randomly, had to reboot the device 4 times already (twice to just create and rename a folder).
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Click to collapse
I had the same problem at first, but I realized my USB ports on the front end of my PC arent USB 2.0, so I plugged it into the back, and works like a charm. Just a thought.
corporal_hades said:
what about the option in settings -> storage -> and tap the menu button on the top right and select USB Computer connection?
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Click to collapse
I already did that and tried both options (MTP & PTP), but the N10 does not show up on my computer at all in either case, with or without USB debugging. I have had no such problems with my other android devices (all still running gingerbread, in case that matters).
My N10 is rooted and my computer runs xubuntu 12.04; I don't have a window box to test... Any suggestions? Thanks!
case-sensitive said:
I already did that and tried both options (MTP & PTP), but the N10 does not show up on my computer at all in either case, with or without USB debugging. I have had no such problems with my other android devices (all still running gingerbread, in case that matters).
My N10 is rooted and my computer runs xubuntu 12.04; I don't have a window box to test... Any suggestions? Thanks!
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Click to collapse
Unfortunately the answer is no.
There was a long discussion on the Galaxy Nexus forums about it a while back.
I also wish for a usb mass storage option for compatibility with radios for playing music. They don't read mtp/ptp for any generic one I've come across.
ceribaen said:
Unfortunately the answer is no.
There was a long discussion on the Galaxy Nexus forums about it a while back.
I also wish for a usb mass storage option for compatibility with radios for playing music. They don't read mtp/ptp for any generic one I've come across.
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Click to collapse
Hmm, but what's the main thing stopping this from being possible? I thought I heard of a few JB devices that were able to get USB Mass Storage (LG Optimus G I think has a method, or whatever the phone is that has similar parts to a Nexus 4), and a Galaxy Tab I used to have had Mass Storage in ICS.
Mass storage is possible when the sdcard volume is actually a separate disk. On the Nexus 10 this is an "emulated" sdcard and cannot use USB mass storage safely because that protocol gives exclusive control to PC.
The easiest solution is to use one of the many wireless transfer apps like AirDroid.
Another option for Linux users if you really want a wired transfer is to use adbfs. This is a FUSE wrapper around the usb android debug protocol.
https://github.com/spion/adbfs-rootless
adbfs would give you seamless mounting just like USB Mass Storage.
Another solution, though not a seamless mount, is QtADB: http://qtadb.wordpress.com/
This is another wrapper around the usb android debug protocol.
Oh my god, thank you for the AirDroid recommendation. Holy crap is this program useful with my new nexus 4.
dalingrin said:
Mass storage is possible when the sdcard volume is actually a separate disk. On the Nexus 10 this is an "emulated" sdcard and cannot use USB mass storage safely because that protocol gives exclusive control to PC.
The easiest solution is to use one of the many wireless transfer apps like AirDroid.
Another option for Linux users if you really want a wired transfer is to use adbfs. This is a FUSE wrapper around the usb android debug protocol.
https://github.com/spion/adbfs-rootless
adbfs would give you seamless mounting just like USB Mass Storage.
Another solution, though not a seamless mount, is QtADB: http://qtadb.wordpress.com/
This is another wrapper around the usb android debug protocol.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you so much! AirDroid is genius!
MTP storage to USB storage: accidental solution!
espionage724 said:
Not entirely sure what kind of process might be needed, but is it at all possible to use the older method of transferring files between a computer to an Android device (USB Mass Storage) instead of MTP?
MTP (in my experience) is... not ideal in most cases. File transfers are seemingly slower, can only do one thing at a time (I think if your transferring a file, you can't even browse other folders on the MTP device), and sometimes file transfers just get stuck for no reason. Was trying to copy over a few PDF's to my N10 and it seems to just hang randomly, had to reboot the device 4 times already (twice to just create and rename a folder).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
dear espionage,
i just wanted to share this with you in case it would be helpful. in fact, you might even have more technical know-how to find out how i accidentally managed this useful fix. first, the reason i was looking for this MTP to USB storage was my habit of synchronizing my thumb-drive to my desktop using any free synching software. this of course, can be only be done when the storage device is recognized as a DRIVE. unfortunately, i believe with the updating of the OS to 4.1 onwards, the USB storage option has been removed, and now only access to MTP is possible. the bad side to this is that one's device is recognized as a portable media device and this means i can no longer synch like i did before the contents of the SD card to my desktop.
second, i found the solution accidentally by installing MultiMount-SD v.2.5 into my Sony Xperia V (LT25i). accidentally i say, because when i clicked on it for the first time, it wouldn't work. it showed a help tip saying that i should trying enabling what it called an MTP fix provided by the program. i did this, restarted the program and guess what happened. there occurred a looping sequence (i guess unending) device recognition-mount and unmount (the PC sounded this off many times), since there was no end to it, i decided to UNINSTALL the program even while the recognition loop was going on. in the meantime one could see a drive appearing in the EXPLORER with a (?), then it would appear with an assigned drive letter, then finally disappear, and so on.
i successfully uninstalled the MultiMount apk, and surprisingly even with the message that the device wasn't properly recognized or installed, i could now connect my Xperia and it mounts as a USB storage device and no longer MTP. to test this 'accident', i tried connecting it to my desktop, running Windows 7, and it worked without any hitches! I don't really mind losing the MTP option, sides it's very limited in its connectivity with the PC. Another bonus, is despite this, i can still communicate with my device through the MyPhoneExplorer program that allows one to send text messages and other stuff. This was one wonderful accident.
oh, one last thing, even with rebooting my phone, the setup seems to have become a 'permanent fix'. now, when the device is connected one sees in the activated portions in the top menu saying: USB Storage - SD card connected to PC. This was never there before... And i wonder what MultiMountSD must have left permanently to allow my Xperia V to now connect as USB storage. Yahoo!!!
i hope though, you could see what the technical side of this accident is, so that somehow something more stable could be done or programmed without having to go through the 'accidental' procedure i have detailed above.
ciao,
bodega1968
case-sensitive said:
I already did that and tried both options (MTP & PTP), but the N10 does not show up on my computer at all in either case, with or without USB debugging. I have had no such problems with my other android devices (all still running gingerbread, in case that matters).
My N10 is rooted and my computer runs xubuntu 12.04; I don't have a window box to test... Any suggestions? Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had this issue with Ubuntu 12.04 too, after I updated to 13.04 it started to work like a charm . You can also try changing the rules in your PC, you can find how to do it in the Google website .
"This Story Ends Where It Began" - Octavarium (Dream Theater)
Sent from my GT-I9505
OTG
You can use OTG and transfer files
MTP and USB Storage
SmokinCharger said:
You can use OTG and transfer files
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Click to collapse
Thanks SmokinCharger! I guess it's quite clear that attempts to allow certain devices to be read in USB Storage mode is a hardware configuration. If your device isn't designed for it, then it won't be able to do this. It's like wanting your volkswagen to have a 6th gear... thus, what was posted previously is true:
Originally Posted by dalingrin:
[Mass storage is possible when the sdcard volume is actually a separate disk. On the Nexus 10 this is an "emulated" sdcard and cannot use USB mass storage safely because that protocol gives exclusive control to PC.]
*I also would like to apologize what i've posted earlier regarding my accidental discovery with Multi-Mount SD. What the app actually did was to access a feature in my device (rooted Xperia V LT125i) which i wasn't aware of. All the time, my device was actually configured to have both MTP and USB Storage.:silly:
So for such devices that are hardware configured only to be MTP or PTP, the only 'solution' or 'alternative' would be to "ROOT" them and set them up with OTG (On the Go) USB access. This may have some hitches, but i've been using this quite a lot. Sometimes though, a RESET is required so that explorer applications would function normally.
Thanks again. I guess this will be all for now in our attempts to reconfigure something that is hardware defined in certain devices.
bodega1968 said:
Thanks SmokinCharger! I guess it's quite clear that attempts to allow certain devices to be read in USB Storage mode is a hardware configuration. If your device isn't designed for it, then it won't be able to do this. It's like wanting your volkswagen to have a 6th gear... thus, what was posted previously is true:
Originally Posted by dalingrin:
[Mass storage is possible when the sdcard volume is actually a separate disk. On the Nexus 10 this is an "emulated" sdcard and cannot use USB mass storage safely because that protocol gives exclusive control to PC.]
*I also would like to apologize what i've posted earlier regarding my accidental discovery with Multi-Mount SD. What the app actually did was to access a feature in my device (rooted Xperia V LT125i) which i wasn't aware of. All the time, my device was actually configured to have both MTP and USB Storage.:silly:
So for such devices that are hardware configured only to be MTP or PTP, the only 'solution' or 'alternative' would be to "ROOT" them and set them up with OTG (On the Go) USB access. This may have some hitches, but i've been using this quite a lot. Sometimes though, a RESET is required so that explorer applications would function normally.
Thanks again. I guess this will be all for now in our attempts to reconfigure something that is hardware defined in certain devices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're welcome. Chainfire is a great and well known developer that has development many great apps including Stickmount. Look it up in Play especially the Pro version, which is "The price is aimed at being approximately one beer at the bar ". It works with mounting the UBS OTG. The Pro will automatically mount and unmount.

please delete this

delete
need someone that can test this (tested and i didnt have any problems) with a otk cable, a disk or a usb keyboard.
USB Mass Storage mode has nothing whatsoever to do with OTG. It is an alternative to Media Transfer Protocol, describing how your mobile device's storage is presented to other devices.
JulianPaoloThiry said:
USB Mass Storage mode has nothing whatsoever to do with OTG. It is an alternative to Media Transfer Protocol, describing how your mobile device's storage is presented to other devices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i know, corrected
I don't have the "persist.sys.usb.config=mtp,adb" setting in build.prop, but I've added yours and nothing changes when I connect an USB stick(8G) on my powered OTG cable. Only the led lights two seconds and turns off, not like the rapid pulses reading when I connect it to a PC.
-
The other setting, "persist.lab126.sys.usb.mtp=1" is present, and I tested a 0 on it(and reset) with no evident effects...
Restored to original....
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Oh thanks. Every day you learn something.

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