Database Users

How To: Iconia A500 and USB Harddrives

When formatting a hard drive for use with a Android Tab, couple things to note,
1) The hard drive needs to be in fat32
2) If it is formatted in fat32 but is part of an extended file system it will not read on the tablet.
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How to format:
1) Plug in drive and go to disc management on windows (right click on 'My Computer' and choose 'manage' > 'disc management')
2)Right click on the usb drive and choose "Delete volume".
3) Keep on doing this until there is no more option to delete volumes. That's when you know that any extended file systems have been deleted.
4) Use Easeus Partiton Manager (or a partitioning tool of your choice) and format your drive in fat32 and it should now be readable through your file browser of choice within android.
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I high recommend "File Manager HD" It is optomised for Honeycomb and allows bookmarks and LAN connections.
The USB drive will be located under mnt>usb_storage

I had success with the following utility and my 500GB NTFS-formatted external:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=13337600&postcount=6
Hope this helps.

further information on the above post:
1. 3 version (drive mount on the market)=has the ability to mount ntfs microsd card and also usb drive
1. 2has no sdcard support but would work with usb drive with virtual drives. ie-virtual cd drives in iomega or wd drive

just looking for some help. I have a 1 tb portable hard drive in ntfs. I can get the drive mounted and access it but when i play a movie i get no sound. I have tried multiple video players. Thanks for any help

thebaum said:
just looking for some help. I have a 1 tb portable hard drive in ntfs. I can get the drive mounted and access it but when i play a movie i get no sound. I have tried multiple video players. Thanks for any help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Probably the format of the video file. What codec is the audio encoded with?
Sent from Vera, my Iconia A500; All dressed up going places!

USB OTG to mount Galaxy Nexus?

I'm looking to mount my Galaxy Nexus to my Nexus 7, but when I go about it like I would a usb stick stickmount doesn't see the sd card. My USB OTG host cable works perfectly with my 64gb SanDisk Cruzer thumb drive, but it is NTFS formatted to get around the 4gb file size limit. I can read files, copy files off of it, and stream files from the stick just fine but I am unable to write to the stick. I'd like to be able to get rid of NANDROID backups, playstation games, other large files, etc without having to connect to a computer.
1. What format is the "SD card" on the Galaxy Nexus? Is it ext3/ext4 which stickmount can't read?
2. If there is a better way to make an NTFS formatted writable stick I'm all ears...
3. Maybe I should just get a smaller separate stick that's FAT32 and thus writable...

Nokia?
thirtynation said:
I'm looking to mount my Galaxy Nexus to my Nexus 7, but when I go about it like I would a usb stick stickmount doesn't see the sd card. My USB OTG host cable works perfectly with my 64gb SanDisk Cruzer thumb drive, but it is NTFS formatted to get around the 4gb file size limit. I can read files, copy files off of it, and stream files from the stick just fine but I am unable to write to the stick. I'd like to be able to get rid of NANDROID backups, playstation games, other large files, etc without having to connect to a computer.
1. What format is the "SD card" on the Galaxy Nexus? Is it ext3/ext4 which stickmount can't read?
2. If there is a better way to make an NTFS formatted writable stick I'm all ears...
3. Maybe I should just get a smaller separate stick that's FAT32 and thus writable...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't seen that done with Android devices just yet... maybe it's possible, but I haven't heard of it. I know that Nokia phones can hook up as external storage to the N8 (saw a video on YouTube) but that's as far as I know.
Also, to write files to an NTFS volume on Android, it seems that you need to add the "fuse.ko" to your kernel (in /system/lib/modules) I tried doing this with the Nexus 7 ToolKit, but I wasn't about to insmod it (make it run) since the fuse.ko I has was apparently for a different version of Android??? I've literally spent about 10 hours "searching" on xda and all over the internet. It seems (oddly) that everyone in the Android community is content with a measly 32GB total limit, and 4GB file size limit. *(facepalm)*

This won't work. Android, with 3.0, stopped exporting storage via SD card, because of reasons[1]. If at all, you can have a vendor modify Android as to export your plug-in SD card, but not the internal storage.
Currently, Galaxy Nexus etc. offer their files via the 'MTP' protocol when plugged in, and there's no support to act as an MTP client AFAIK (since Linux support for MTP sucks balls).
[1]: since a separate storage for /data, /system etc. was considered uncool, as it made you dependent on a predefined partition size (remember 256MB 'internal storage' phones and Android Market "uninstalled due to low disk space"?), newer phones, and especially the Nexus line, features a single storage container.
The USB mass storage interface works like plugging in a hard drive into your system: it gives you block-level access, and this is usually synonymous with "exclusive" access, as it results in destroyed or confused file systems if two independent systems try to mount the file system on a storage device.
Problem is that Android still needs to be able to actually run, so it can't give you block level access to the internal storage. The only way that would be feasible is to turn off your phone completely and have the bootloader give you USB mass storage access, which is counterproductive.
Thus the need for something like MTP (which was already around for a while) was born, which gives you the ability to make it look like a file system, but actually work on a client/server basis like FTP.
tl;dr: no usb mass storage ("usb stick mode") with galaxy nexus. ever.

Can't check at the moment, but can't you mount the SD card from CWM recovery on the Nexus in USB Mode rather than MTP?

What we need is a file manager that can use MTP. I'm also interested in hooking my Gnex up to my 7. There must be something out there that can do this.

Bluetooth file transfer.
or
Connect to the same wifi and share.

[Q] Copy music to sdcard0 and play with Apollo

Hi!
I'm kind of new to this, so forgive me if this is a stupid question.
I installed CM10.2 on the eMMC along with TWRP recently.
I am looking for a way to use the 1 GB of space (labeled as sdcard0) I can access when i connect the device to my computer to store some music and play it though Apollo.
My questions / concerns are
1. Is there an easy way to increase that 1GB to store more music (i know I could use an external SDcard, but am just inquisitive)
2. My nook shows up as a portable device on my pc (running win 7) when settings in storage are set to media device, but it gives me an error every time i copy a file saying the device has been disconnected, even though i can copy one media file at a time (i cant copy more then one file at a time)
3. If i change the setting in storage to mass storage, it shows up in my pc as a drive but then i can not copy anything to it as it dosent not seem to be accessible
4. If i do get media onto the 1GB partition (one song at a time), Apollo will not query that location to look for music, and if i use the file manager to open the file in Apollo it dosent remember it once the song is over. Any help to get the files playing smoothly in Apollo from the location would be appreciated.
Just wanted to give you all a big thumbs up for all the great work, and thanks in advance for your help.
Cheers!!

icezbox said:
I am looking for a way to use the 1 GB of space (labeled as sdcard0) I can access when i connect the device to my computer to store some music and play it though Apollo.
My questions / concerns are
1. Is there an easy way to increase that 1GB to store more music (i know I could use an external SDcard, but am just inquisitive)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You would need tor repartition the internal eMMC. I have never done it (my Nook came with a 4GB partition for sdcard0), but there are instructions in the forums.
icezbox said:
2. My nook shows up as a portable device on my pc (running win 7) when settings in storage are set to media device, but it gives me an error every time i copy a file saying the device has been disconnected, even though i can copy one media file at a time (i cant copy more then one file at a time)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sounds like an issue with the MTP implementation in Windows 7 (works fine in Linux here). You may want to change the storage settings and use the USB mass storage mode, so your PC will see the Nook as a standard USB drive.
icezbox said:
4. If i do get media onto the 1GB partition (one song at a time), Apollo will not query that location to look for music, and if i use the file manager to open the file in Apollo it dosent remember it once the song is over. Any help to get the files playing smoothly in Apollo from the location would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You may want to use the sdcard0 partition as if it was a “proper” sdcard, provided that you are using CM, you can enter this in a terminal:
Code:
setprop persist.sys.vold.switchexternal 1
After rebooting, applications should see the sdcard0 volume as a proper SD card (and scan it for media as expected).

Thanks a lot for the help. I did find the thread to reparation my emmc, but they recommended to keep it at 1GB, so will stick with that for now to solve my other problems.
You mentioned to change storage settings to USB mass storage, however when I do that, like i said it does show up in windows, but i can not access it giving an error that the drive is not connected and I should connect a drive.
with regard to your comment on making it a "proper sdcard" i must be doing something wrong, cos it does not make any change, may be i need to do it as a super user or something like that, or type in some code before the command you provided.
Thanks again!!

icezbox said:
with regard to your comment on making it a "proper sdcard" i must be doing something wrong, cos it does not make any change, may be i need to do it as a super user or something like that, or type in some code before the command you provided.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think what he must be referring to is swapping internal and external sdcards. See my NC Tips thread linked in my signature, item A16.
And I'm not sure why you think going to 1GB/5GB scheme is bad and staying with what you have is best. By far most users prefer the old 1GB/5GB scheme.
Sent from my BN NookHD+ using XDA Premium HD app

Trying to move KODI / SPMC data to SD card or USB drive

I noticed on a few different occasions that my KODI (now using SPMC but they both behave the same way) app data growing to more the 6 Gigs thereby making my 16Gig shield run out of memory. I have been uninstalling and reinstalling to work around the issue.
I'd like to resolve it so I tried following the instructions in the thread below. :
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=268766&pid=2319979#pid2319979
I'm not using adoptable storage and am trying to get this working with either an SD card (shown as /storage/4B2F-56AC) or a USB 3.0 thumbdrive (shown as /storage/98FB-2ABF).
I created a file in /sdcard called "xbmc_env.properties" (I also tried "spmc_env.properties" even though SPMC is supposed to recognize both).
I added the follow text in the file : xbmc.data=/storage/98FB-2ABF/
Unfortunately with this file sitting in the /sdcard location, SPMC refuses to run.. It just sits at a black screen. I force closed the app, restarted the Shield and it still does the same thing... Sits at a black screen.
When I remove the file SPMC returns to working normally so I know it's trying to process the file.. I'm just not sure why it's not working.. It's simply one line of code in a file so it's not rocket science but I simply cannot get SPMC to launch when the file is present.
Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong ? I'd still like to move the DATA to an external source so if it grows unexpectedly in the future it doesn't interfere with other SHIELD TV apps and functions.
On a side note...
I DID notice that the culprit files that were taking up all the space in the SPMC / KODI install were .cache files... I'm thinking I should just be able to delete them ( I actually did but SPMC was still acting up) to reclaim that valuable space ?

Hmmmm.. 57 views and no replies..
I guess this hasn't been attempted very often on the Shield.
If someone could successfully take a crack at this and post a how to it would be greatly appreciated.
I tried again yesterday on both an SD card and a USB drive w/o any luck. One thing I did notice though was that when I tried to actually write to both devices through the Shield using X-Plore, it failed. With the SD card it prompted me how to enable write access and I eventually was able to copy data over to it but with the USB drive it simply failed and I couldn't get copy anything to it while it was connected to the Shield.
I should lastly mention that I am NOT rooted and am fully stock.
Is this even possible using external storage ? I don't want to setup these device as "Internal Storage" as it's my understanding that when doing so you are replacing the current internal storage (my 16Gigs) with the SD (or USB thumb drive). I tried doing so with my SD card a while back but noticed periodic slow downs on the Shield so I undid the change.

It seems as though the "Adoptable storage" option has improved with the latest update.
I converted my USB drive to Internal Storage and let the Shield do it's thing.
When all was done I was able to goto the SPMC app settings and choose to have the app on the USB drive vs. the internal 16Gb storage. I made the switch and SPMC appears to be working ok. Time will tell if I see any noticeable performance impacts.
I already use a centralized SQL DB for all media info so I'm hoping performance will be the same.
Mods... You can probably close this thread.

the.teejster said:
It seems as though the "Adoptable storage" option has improved with the latest update.
I converted my USB drive to Internal Storage and let the Shield do it's thing.
When all was done I was able to goto the SPMC app settings and choose to have the app on the USB drive vs. the internal 16Gb storage. I made the switch and SPMC appears to be working ok. Time will tell if I see any noticeable performance impacts.
I already use a centralized SQL DB for all media info so I'm hoping performance will be the same.
Mods... You can probably close this thread.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You mention a change in performance when using your sd card. You do understand that you must use a class 10 or preferably higher class to make it the same or faster than current internal storage?
I was trying to do the same thing as you but in my case I chose to move internal storage to a 64gb usb 3.0 usb drive.
Then I noticed kodi's performance was absolutely ****ty. The reason for this is because it tries to read data from the usb drive, and somehow kodi doesn't handle that well. My solution was to let the app be installed to adoptive storage but let the .kodi data be read from the actual internal storage.
This eliminated all performance issues!

Don't you need a UHS Class 3 device?

I have since tried converting and testing out both my USB thumb drive and my Class 10 SD card by converting them one at a time to internal storage and moving SPMC over.
I honestly thought my 6 month old USB 3.0 thumb drive would have been faster than a 3 year old SD card but I was wrong.
I have noticed a small performance decrease but nothing near as bad as you mention that currently warrants me to revert to internal storage. Time will tell as I use it more.
shaggydiamond said:
You mention a change in performance when using your sd card. You do understand that you must use a class 10 or preferably higher class to make it the same or faster than current internal storage?
I was trying to do the same thing as you but in my case I chose to move internal storage to a 64gb usb 3.0 usb drive.
Then I noticed kodi's performance was absolutely ****ty. The reason for this is because it tries to read data from the usb drive, and somehow kodi doesn't handle that well. My solution was to let the app be installed to adoptive storage but let the .kodi data be read from the actual internal storage.
This eliminated all performance issues!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I decided to revert back to using internal storage only. I was getting intermittent pausing of videos that I was watching off my NAS with SPMC installed on both a Class 10 Samsung SD card and a USB 3.0 thumb drive.

the.teejster said:
I decided to revert back to using internal storage only. I was getting intermittent pausing of videos that I was watching off my NAS with SPMC installed on both a Class 10 Samsung SD card and a USB 3.0 thumb drive.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am using adoptive storage but moved kodi data around for better performance.
I followed this official guide on how to move Kodi data folder somewhere else:
HOW-TO:Change_data_location_for_Android (wiki)
I used ES file Explorer for this.
Here are the steps:
turn on the option to show hidden files (it is the first option). On the root of your SD Card (path is /sdcard) create a file called: xbmc_env.properties.
Open the created file and add only this line:
xbmc.data=/storage/emulated/0/InternalStorage/
You can point to another folder inside InternalStorage folder but you need to create it first. It will not be created automatically by Kodi.
Start Kodi to verify that it works. Kodi will start with the clean profile. Quit Kodi.
Using ES file explorer to erase the new contents of the /sdcard/InternalStorage folder. This is where you want your kodi data.
Using ES file Explorer and go to /sdcard/Android/data/org.xbmc.kodi/files
Move everything to a /sdcard/InternalStorage. Or you can just copy it and keep the old files until you verify that everything works.
Now start Kodi. You should see your old stuff loading but now everything is fast again.

Thanks for the info.. I actually used this as the basis for what I was trying to accomplish except I wanted to have Kodi DATA on the external storage to prevent unforeseen growth end up chewing up all the valuable internal storage.
The problem is that you cannot write to external storage from the shield UNLESS it's setup as adoptable storage, hence the approach I tried which worked, but resulted in unacceptable performance in the form of periodic video freezing.
shaggydiamond said:
I am using adoptive storage but moved kodi data around for better performance.
I followed this official guide on how to move Kodi data folder somewhere else:
HOW-TO:Change_data_location_for_Android (wiki)
I used ES file Explorer for this.
Here are the steps:
turn on the option to show hidden files (it is the first option). On the root of your SD Card (path is /sdcard) create a file called: xbmc_env.properties.
Open the created file and add only this line:
xbmc.data=/storage/emulated/0/InternalStorage/
You can point to another folder inside InternalStorage folder but you need to create it first. It will not be created automatically by Kodi.
Start Kodi to verify that it works. Kodi will start with the clean profile. Quit Kodi.
Using ES file explorer to erase the new contents of the /sdcard/InternalStorage folder. This is where you want your kodi data.
Using ES file Explorer and go to /sdcard/Android/data/org.xbmc.kodi/files
Move everything to a /sdcard/InternalStorage. Or you can just copy it and keep the old files until you verify that everything works.
Now start Kodi. You should see your old stuff loading but now everything is fast again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Requirements to format a USB drive so Shield TV & TWRP and access it's files?

I'm trying to find out the Android requirements to properly format a USB drive from either a Windows or macOS computer (Linux if required) so (A) I can mount it on Shield TV 2017 (16GB) and (B) TWRP 3.2.3.0 Recovery Project can actually read the files on it.
What are the exact requirements to format the USB drive so Android doesn't have to modify or update anything?
FAT32/NTFS/XFAT/Other ? from what I've read FAT32 seems to be the most preferable.
MBR/GDP/Other ?
Primary/Logical ?
What tool is the best to format this so there's no issues?
I've tried Gparted, Windows Format, Acronis, Disk Utility, MiniTool Partition Wizard, and a few others.
Are their any requirements to copy data (i.e. boot.img, boot.zip, readme.txt, etc...) files from Windows/macOS/Linux onto the USB drive so it's readable?
These may sound like primitive or stupid questions, however I've spent several hours trying to boot my Shield TV (usb keyboard holding keys A and B) to then launch TWRP 3.2.3.0 Recovery to then mount the USB and read its files to Install them. So far I've tried just about everything I've learned from the internet and nothing seems to work. I've even formatted the USB drive using a Sony Android (7.0) TV however when I attempt to insert that onto either a PC or Mac both require the drive to be initialized. When my Shield TV was still working any USB drive I inserted required it be formatted or updated in some way so it could read it.
Currently if I format the USB drive can be detected by Shield TV and mounted by TWRP however none of the files I've copied onto it can be viewed by TWRP. I understand that TWRP filters files so if one needs to load an *.img file one needs to press the correct button to "view" and "access" those file types.
I'm starting to believe it's not the USB it's TWRP but I can't tell for certain.

Does one need to create Android-x86 (android-x86_64-8.1-rc2.iso) in VMware to accomplish this task? It's mind boggling that this is seems to be so difficult when it should be rather straight forward.

whiteak said:
You have tried mounting the USB I take it? I would try a different USB Stick if you have one for sure, it doesn't have to be any special format at all, just a simple fat32 format through Windows is all it needs. Without actually physically seeing what is going on, I can't really say what is going on, power is actually getting to the USB, eg, can you see any lights flashing etc?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello whiteak, Shield TV sees the USB drive, TWRP is able to mount it, navigate to it and list folders but no files are displayed either through Install (to see boot.img, readme.txt or boot.zip) even when toggling the IMG or ZIP button. I've also attempted to use TWRP's File Manager to review this data, no success. In an alternate test to prove that TWRP can see any *.img file I navigated to the Downloads folder (internal storage) and it can see recovery.img just fine. Using TWRP's File Manager I've attempted to change the file permissions (chmod 755, 777, etc...) to the usb-otg but that didn't change anything either.
At this point I'm unsure what to think? Is it the way the USB drive is formatted? Is it file/folder permissions on the USB drive? Is it TWRP limiting things that are actually there but refuses to read them for security or some other reasons? Hard to tell...

SOLVED
I solved the problem. I'll post the exact steps later but in short, create a Virtual Machine, install Android 8.1, insert the USB drive, format it and quit. Once this is done PROPERLY I later copied the necessary files using macOS TERMINAL from macOS to the USB drive. Now TWRP sees everything. What a pain in the @$$ to do such a simple task.

nadia p. said:
I solved the problem. I'll post the exact steps later but in short, create a Virtual Machine, install Android 8.1, insert the USB drive, format it and quit. Once this is done PROPERLY I later copied the necessary files using macOS TERMINAL from macOS to the USB drive. Now TWRP sees everything. What a pain in the @$$ to do such a simple task.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i havent used twrp on my shield tv before but i typically prefer to use twrp's adb terminal for that type of stuff..
it sounds like u had something formatted wrong or maybe even some type of encryption on the usb so it couldnt see the files... u def. shouldnt have to do all that lol

elliwigy said:
i havent used twrp on my shield tv before but i typically prefer to use twrp's adb terminal for that type of stuff..
it sounds like u had something formatted wrong or maybe even some type of encryption on the usb so it couldnt see the files... u def. shouldnt have to do all that lol
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello elliwigy, I'm quite new at all this so I didn't know how to format a USB drive using ADB, I didn't even know this was possible. I'll have to look into this next time. My workaround installing Android in VMware worked out well.