[Q] Managing files via PC? - Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

With all other Android phones I have, when I plug in the USB I have the option to mount as a storage device. Here I can organize media, move downloaded zip to the root of the SD, clear out unneeded files. It seems with the Nexus 4 I can no longer do that; mount it as a drive.
When I attach the USB cable I can either connect "media device" or "camera". When I select a camera, it mounts just the DCIM folder. This allowed me to transfer all of my pics and vids to the device. When I select "media device" I don't see any change. I don't see a mounted drive/folder to organize/transfer music.
Is there a way to use the SD as a mounted drive and bypass the limited options of "media device" or "camera". If not what is the best way to manage files on your phone via your PC?
I am running Parandroid 3.94 and my PC is a Win7 64.

SykesAT said:
With all other Android phones I have, when I plug in the USB I have the option to mount as a storage device. Here I can organize media, move downloaded zip to the root of the SD, clear out unneeded files. It seems with the Nexus 4 I can no longer do that; mount it as a drive.
When I attach the USB cable I can either connect "media device" or "camera". When I select a camera, it mounts just the DCIM folder. This allowed me to transfer all of my pics and vids to the device. When I select "media device" I don't see any change. I don't see a mounted drive/folder to organize/transfer music.
Is there a way to use the SD as a mounted drive and bypass the limited options of "media device" or "camera". If not what is the best way to manage files on your phone via your PC?
I am running Parandroid 3.94 and my PC is a Win7 64.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On the Nexus 4 the internal storage is mounted as an MTB device rather than a USB drive. Make sure you have the latest Nexus 4 driver installed (use a toolkit or the SDK to install the driver) then follow yacbos' instructions at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2232471&page=2 to let Windows view the MTB storage.

Worked like a charm. Thanks.

Related

Can't Mount SD Card

Hey Everyone,
I apologise if this is in the wrong forum (not sure if it should be in Android Development), and before I start I want to make it clear that I DID use the search function, I searched for "Can't Enable USB Mass Storage" and "No option to mount SD Card" with no relevant results.
Rom: JFv1.51 CRB43-EU
Ok, I was using my phone fine I managed to sync around 12GB worth of music and transfer a few files last night (I flashed the ROM around 20:00 GMT after trying out several hero builds).
This morning I mounted the SD Card to my laptop (OS is Windows 7 RC1) and transferred a few APK's. Suddenly as I was in the market the phone comes up with "Checking SD Card for Errors" and had for some reason unmounted itself from the PC.
Now when I plug in the USB cable all I get is the light to indicate it's charging. There's no option to mount the SD Card. I've tried it on my Laptop, My Vista Desktop AND My Xbox 360 (usually there's a mount option when you connect to that which allows the xbox to see music on the phone).
Strangest thing is the MicroSD Card seems fine, I am able to play my music and see the 2 pictures I have stored on it. Another site suggested using Anycut to make a shortcut to SD CArd and then ticking Enable USB Mass Storage. This doesn't work either, I get a ! in a triangle in the status bar saying USB Mass Storage Enabled but neither my laptop or my desktop will pick it up.
Any Suggestions?
Thanks,
Steve.
Is USB debugging enabled in settings>applications>development?
alritewhadeva said:
Is USB debugging enabled in settings>applications>development?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, Should it be?
Yes it should be. Try uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers (USB mass storage devices)
Edit: Double pOst

[Q] Please Educate about USB Storage Limits

OK, to get to this message, I had to read a warning about getting banned if not a developer thread.
Well, this is. Sort of.
I posted a question in the general forum and commented on the same subject in the Q&A forum. I think I know my answer but I would like to know why this problem exists.
I just got my tablet Friday evening. I figured it all out and was able to use external storage on drives and USB sticks. When I try to connect my phone as a disk drive, no files.
I am assuming that access to these files is for lack of root access, which I am not going to get because I immediately let it update to 3.2.
So, could someone tell me if lack of root is the answer and why? The phone does instantly show up as a disk drive on XP and Windows 7.
Thanks, and moderators, please don't kick me out.
Did you try mounting your phone, if you can? And yes root it would be easier with the usb mount app, or just use an app like es file explorer that can go into the root section without root then go to mnt and in one of those files should be your phone files, because i have an env touch and i use usb mass storage and it shows up on my iconia
Thanks. Yes, I did see the folder MNT but it did not show up. Using my usual file explorers, I can see the internal storage and the SD card. The next entry is the USB STORAGE where I find no files when the phone is connected.
If I connect an external drive or usb memory device, I can access all the files. When I connect the phone as a drive I see that nothing is there.
When I connect these same devices to my home pc running Win 7 and laptop with XP, they all connect the same way.
There is something in the OS that is not letting my tablet file system see my phone file system.
Thanks for the reply, I'll keep my eye on this thread.
I'm having the same problem, i can import photos or videos from the phone when the phone is on mtp mode (media transfer protocol) but when in file transfer mode (msc) nothing shows up in the mnt folder or in drive mount app. i'm running taboonay 2.2 with villain kernel. It works fine with external hdd ntfs or fat. When connecting the phone to my computer i had to install a driver from windows update and it shows as an xperia arc, do i also need a driver in my tablet? Has anyone already connected and android phone to an android tablet in mass storage mode?
Sent from my A501 using XDA App
Not sure Root has anything to do with it. I'm rooted on both phone and tab , and have no access to the files on my phone. When in "disk drive" mode, all it does is "charge".

[Q] How do you unmount USB drives with stickmount?

Stickmount works fine as far as it goes. The catch is that I haven't found a way to *unmount* drives with it. When I press "unmount", it just pops up the box showing mounted drives. To make things worse, If I unplug the drive, the next time I plug it in, stickmount generates a new mount point (sda, sdb, sdc, etc).
USB Hub Controller from the market lets me mount and unmount drives, plus I can specify the mount point, but it wont automount.
Any ideas for either app?
I usually just look in the notification area where it says "tap here to unmount" or something similar.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium
tjupille said:
Stickmount works fine as far as it goes. The catch is that I haven't found a way to *unmount* drives with it. When I press "unmount", it just pops up the box showing mounted drives. To make things worse, If I unplug the drive, the next time I plug it in, stickmount generates a new mount point (sda, sdb, sdc, etc).
USB Hub Controller from the market lets me mount and unmount drives, plus I can specify the mount point, but it wont automount.
Any ideas for either app?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
unmounting with stickmount works fine for me... do you have a single device plugged in, or multiples devices through a hub>?
Mine did this. Use your file explorer and navigate to your mount point. More than likely there is a file keeping it listed. I deleted the file (happened to be xbmc apk) and it unmounted fine.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app
I was have the same problem, but couldn't determine if there were any open files. I had been using an older 1 gig Lexar drive, first formatted to FAT32, then tried EXT4, then back to FAT32. In all cases, it would mount automatically, and I could browse, copy & open files on it. However, as above, unmounting only brought up the box telling me the existing mounts. After waiting several minutes, I removed the flash drive from the OTG cable, but never got an error message, though the sda1 directory was still there.
Getting nowhere with this, with the Lexar drive not connected, I deleted the usbStorage/sda1 directory (no error messages), then connected a different flash drive, a ~3 year old HP 8 gig model. Surprise - it works correctly. I tried it 4 times or so, and no problems.
Don't know what's going on there, but I'm leery now of putting the Lexar back on, considering all the problems I came across.
I'll try some different flash drives this evening.
Questions go in the Q&A section
I had the same problem. I resolved it by making sure that my file explorer (ES File Explorer) and the Gallery app were closed. Just like Windows, a USB drive can't be unmounted safely if an application is still accessing that drive. In my case I used ES File Explorer to navigate to the contents of the USB drive, and I used the Gallery app to view photos I had stored on the drive. Therefore, I had to make sure that both of those apps were closed. Some apps have a true "exit" option, but not all do. I make a habit of either hitting the back button repeatedly, rather than the home button. Some apps have an exit option in their menus. You may need to go to the Apps Manager in the Android Settings and force close running apps that may have been accessing files from the USB drive. I took the extra precaution of force closing the cached apps (not running), that had been used to view the contents of the USB drive. After doing that, clicking on the stickmount item in the notification bar successfully unmounted the drive. When I plugged the drive back in, it retained the same mount point, and I was easily able to unmount.
GrillMouster said:
I had the same problem. I resolved it by making sure that my file explorer (ES File Explorer) and the Gallery app were closed. Just like Windows, a USB drive can't be unmounted safely if an application is still accessing that drive. In my case I used ES File Explorer to navigate to the contents of the USB drive, and I used the Gallery app to view photos I had stored on the drive. Therefore, I had to make sure that both of those apps were closed. Some apps have a true "exit" option, but not all do. I make a habit of either hitting the back button repeatedly, rather than the home button. Some apps have an exit option in their menus. You may need to go to the Apps Manager in the Android Settings and force close running apps that may have been accessing files from the USB drive. I took the extra precaution of force closing the cached apps (not running), that had been used to view the contents of the USB drive. After doing that, clicking on the stickmount item in the notification bar successfully unmounted the drive. When I plugged the drive back in, it retained the same mount point, and I was easily able to unmount.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 for this solution. I was running into the same issue intermittently, and discovered that by fully quitting ES File Explorer (Menu > More > Exit), the drive would unmount properly. I can't speak for the closing of other apps since I generally just use usb drives for copying things to and from my N7, but I'd imagine GrillMouster is right and that anything that is using files from the usb drive needs to be closed before it can be properly unmounted.
Edit: Also, I discovered that once the drive is properly unmounted, the various folders that are created (sda1, sdb1, etc.) are removed and the next time you mount a drive it will once again be on sda1. At least that's how it worked out for me.
Will no unmount even closing the apps
I have a Nexus 7 with Stickmount 1.5. It works fine except that it does not unmount the USB drive when I tap the unmount option (or even removing the drive altogether). I have tried closing the applications I used while the drive was mounted (ES File Explorer and MX Player), but it still will not unmount. I had to resort to rebooting the device for it to forget about the mount. Is there a background app I have forgotten to kill? Maybe Stickmount needs an "Unmount, damn it!" option to unmount the drives regardless of what apps have locks on files in the drive.
Thanks for your help.
FD
My solution...for now
Frederick Davies said:
I have a Nexus 7 with Stickmount 1.5. It works fine except that it does not unmount the USB drive when I tap the unmount option (or even removing the drive altogether). I have tried closing the applications I used while the drive was mounted (ES File Explorer and MX Player), but it still will not unmount. I had to resort to rebooting the device for it to forget about the mount. Is there a background app I have forgotten to kill? Maybe Stickmount needs an "Unmount, damn it!" option to unmount the drives regardless of what apps have locks on files in the drive.
Thanks for your help.
FD
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm running Stickmount V1.5 on my Nexus 7 (PA2.17/EliteKernel). The only way I found to truly unmount my flash drive was to first click "unmount" in the Stickmount notification and then go to settings > Storage and wait for it to generate the results and you should see an option to unmount USB storage right there... click on it, press "ok" in the pop-up and it will freeze for a few secs and then give you a toast notification (or drawer notification not sure) that says you just unmounted USB... at that point you can unplug your USB drive and you will get no "unexpected removal" message and everything should be fine :good:
nexace said:
I'm running Stickmount V1.5 on my Nexus 7 (PA2.17/EliteKernel). The only way I found to truly unmount my flash drive was to first click "unmount" in the Stickmount notification and then go to settings > Storage and wait for it to generate the results and you should see an option to unmount USB storage right there... click on it, press "ok" in the pop-up and it will freeze for a few secs and then give you a toast notification (or drawer notification not sure) that says you just unmounted USB... at that point you can unplug your USB drive and you will get no "unexpected removal" message and everything should be fine :good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am afraid that that did not work on my Nexus 7.
FD
GrillMouster said:
I had the same problem. I resolved it by making sure that my file explorer (ES File Explorer) and the Gallery app were closed. Just like Windows, a USB drive can't be unmounted safely if an application is still accessing that drive. In my case I used ES File Explorer to navigate to the contents of the USB drive, and I used the Gallery app to view photos I had stored on the drive. Therefore, I had to make sure that both of those apps were closed. Some apps have a true "exit" option, but not all do. I make a habit of either hitting the back button repeatedly, rather than the home button. Some apps have an exit option in their menus. You may need to go to the Apps Manager in the Android Settings and force close running apps that may have been accessing files from the USB drive. I took the extra precaution of force closing the cached apps (not running), that had been used to view the contents of the USB drive. After doing that, clicking on the stickmount item in the notification bar successfully unmounted the drive. When I plugged the drive back in, it retained the same mount point, and I was easily able to unmount.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks
This solution worked for me
Curious!
1) When I mount the USB drive and browse through it with ES File Explorer (rooted), no matter what I do afterwards (kill the ES File Explorer application and all the apps I used to access the files), I cannot unmount the drive unless I reboot the tablet.
2) But if I browse with Dual File Manager (not rooted), I can unmount even while browsing the drive.
3) And if I open the files in the drive directly with mVideoPlayer or MX Player, I can also unmount afterwards even without having to kill the apps.
4) But if I open the files in mVideoPlayer or MX Player through Dual File Manager, it requires a reboot again.
I think that there are some apps whose locks stop the Stickmount unmount (ES Player Explorer), while others don't (Dual File Manager, mVideoPlayer, MX Player); but if you open one app (video player) through another (file manager), it always stops the unmount.
I do not know what the above means, but I hope it provides info for the developers to know what is going on.
FD
Frederick Davies said:
Curious!
1) When I mount the USB drive and browse through it with ES File Explorer (rooted), no matter what I do afterwards (kill the ES File Explorer application and all the apps I used to access the files), I cannot unmount the drive unless I reboot the tablet.
2) But if I browse with Dual File Manager (not rooted), I can unmount even while browsing the drive.
3) And if I open the files in the drive directly with mVideoPlayer or MX Player, I can also unmount afterwards even without having to kill the apps.
4) But if I open the files in mVideoPlayer or MX Player through Dual File Manager, it requires a reboot again.
I think that there are some apps whose locks stop the Stickmount unmount (ES Player Explorer), while others don't (Dual File Manager, mVideoPlayer, MX Player); but if you open one app (video player) through another (file manager), it always stops the unmount.
I do not know what the above means, but I hope it provides info for the developers to know what is going on.
FD
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you would like to see what app has what file open on your USB disk, use lsof in ADB/terminal. needs root. First, what is the USB mount? type in
Code:
mount
and look for your device. If there are too many entries, you can try this instead:
Code:
df -h|grep G
when you have the mountpoint, perhaps it is /storage/sdcard0/usbdisk/, the key is usbdisk. Now you are ready to search the open files:
Code:
su
lsof | grep usbdisk
now, I don't have a USB drive mounted, but I opened a .avi in MX video, and searched for '.avi,' this is what it will look like:
Code:
com.mxtec 23194 u0_a141 80 ??? ??? ??? ??? /storage/sdcard0/Matt/video.avi
so here you can see com.mxtec has opened video.avi, and the PID is 23194.
If that file was on the usb disk, it would keep it from being umounted, so to get rid of it:
Code:
su
kill 23194
I had an issue that's been nagging me and the above info kinda resolved it but not really. Had created a folder on my usb drive using stick mount. After renaming the folder, etc.. Still for a couple of weks even after ejecting the drive... the folder still showed up.. Killed various apps, etc nothing listed showing usbStorage... So while I was doing my usual cleaning through recovery mode with cahces, etc. I hooked it up to my netbook and got into adb and navigated to where my offending folder was and deleted the folder that way. Once booted back into the system, folder wasn't there anymore.
hi all !!!
tjupille said:
Stickmount works fine as far as it goes. The catch is that I haven't found a way to *unmount* drives with it. When I press "unmount", it just pops up the box showing mounted drives. To make things worse, If I unplug the drive, the next time I plug it in, stickmount generates a new mount point (sda, sdb, sdc, etc).
USB Hub Controller from the market lets me mount and unmount drives, plus I can specify the mount point, but it wont automount.
Any ideas for either app?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
stickmount has no unmount in my nexus 7 !!
please help me !! Y^Y
I think an earlier version had an unmount option if you touched the Stickmount notification icon. But I don't have that option anymore. I just make sure I'm not writing to external storage and unplug.
I removed the flash drive and then mount it still is. But then I was hit by unmount. (I'm using version 2.20 Pro).
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium
Anyone use USB OTG helper? For me it works better than stickmount.
Sent from XDA app
gc84245 said:
Anyone use USB OTG helper? For me it works better than stickmount.
Sent from XDA app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes I've had the most success with OTG helper.
Swiped from my Nexus 10 using xda-developers app

OTG USB. Reads fine, however folder contents shows empty.

Using my OTG cable, along with StickMount, I've been able to view files on my USB stick. However, after formatting (exFAT) my USB device, and trying to view files off it once again (using ES file explorer), the folder for the USB Storage now shows up empty. Even when files are present on the USB stick.
I have tried different files on the device, to see if my Nexus 7 will read, but to no avail, it just shows an empty folder.
Anyone got any ideas?
partyfox said:
Using my OTG cable, along with StickMount, I've been able to view files on my USB stick. However, after formatting (exFAT) my USB device, and trying to view files off it once again (using ES file explorer), the folder for the USB Storage now shows up empty. Even when files are present on the USB stick.
I have tried different files on the device, to see if my Nexus 7 will read, but to no avail, it just shows an empty folder.
Anyone got any ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
so I probably won't be able to help, but just out of curiosity, does StickMount launch when you plug in your usb stick?
jma9454 said:
so I probably won't be able to help, but just out of curiosity, does StickMount launch when you plug in your usb stick?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It does, yes
Got it fixed!
When formatting my USB drive through windows I only had exFAT & NTFS file system options. What I did was download "HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool - v2.1.8" - and it gave me the option to use FAT32.
Problem solved, USB device seems to be working now.

usb to pc connection protocol

when i connect my phone to pc, i get several options on the protocol, but none seem to get me my SD card as an actual drive... if i do media or photo, i get the axon as a "device" but not a drive letter. is there any way to set this? i'd like to be able to edit my entire sd card music library directly via foobar, but i can't add the folder if it's a device, only if it has a standard drive path... (for some reason i can navigate to it via foobar for single files, but not folders)
methcat said:
when i connect my phone to pc, i get several options on the protocol, but none seem to get me my SD card as an actual drive... if i do media or photo, i get the axon as a "device" but not a drive letter. is there any way to set this? i'd like to be able to edit my entire sd card music library directly via foobar, but i can't add the folder if it's a device, only if it has a standard drive path... (for some reason i can navigate to it via foobar for single files, but not folders)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Mass Storage mode is disable prety much by default on all recent LP and MM builds. There are ways to enable it but it's kerenl dependent.
Here is an enabler for Android One devices , you can start from there to see if this will work on other devices but i would not try this unless you are unlocked BL and backed with known good restore for boot.img. It probably needs proper kernal support for the device itself
http://forum.xda-developers.com/cro.../tweak-enable-mass-storage-usb-mode-t3128839/
methcat said:
when i connect my phone to pc, i get several options on the protocol, but none seem to get me my SD card as an actual drive... if i do media or photo, i get the axon as a "device" but not a drive letter. is there any way to set this? i'd like to be able to edit my entire sd card music library directly via foobar, but i can't add the folder if it's a device, only if it has a standard drive path... (for some reason i can navigate to it via foobar for single files, but not folders)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As mentioned by @peramikic , Mass Storage is no longer available since LP release, but other option is when you plug your device select MTP, that will allow you the use of your sdcard as mass storage but yeah i know not the same.
Thanks guys. Guess I'm Sol.

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