Question

How can I get my Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 to read my external portable hard drive?

Answer 1

I am afraid that connecting a portable hard drive to the tablet is not possible because the tablet has no way of adding devices like these (Eg: hard disks). If you want to transfer files and data from one device to another then you can connect these two to a computer and then exchange data accordingly.

Answer 2

buy the usb extension for your tablet it only cost like $3.00 on ebay.

Answer 3

I used the usb extension cable however the Galaxy note 10.1 recognizes that there is an external drive at the moment you connect it but it just does not recognize the root folder so it cannot be read. at the beginning the hot plug message its "A high powered external its connected"

Its weird cause this Tab has a more powerful battery than the Galaxy Note II and the Galaxy Note II can actually powered the external drive and read it, I have tested in bot devices with the same external drive.... its a shame... :(

Answer 4

I had the same issue with my galaxy note 10.1.

Here's what you do.

Go to the play spite and download an app called USB Host Diagnostics.

Open the app.

Tap "Start Diagnostics"

Follow directions

A file manager app should open

Look for a folder named "USB Drive A"

Open the folder, inside should be the comments of your usb drive.

The downside is that you'll have to use the usb host diagnostics app every time you want to mount your usb drive.

Search for "usb host otg" in the google play store to find other apps that will allow you to mount your usb devices. You'll probably find an app or two that will allow you to mount an external drive to your tablet as easily as mounting an external drive to a pc or a mac. I've seen payed apps that will automatically mount your drives to android devices as soon as you connect it via usb. I'm almost sure that with a little bit of patience, you might be able to find a free app that does the same.

Another alternative is to flash a custom ROM to your tablet that supports usb host. To learned more about flashing custom ROMS on your galaxy note 10.1, do a search for "galaxy note 10.1 xda" and click on the first link you see that says "Android Developement"

I've seen videos on youtube showing guys using other otg cables where it just works like it's supposed to, instead of having to deal with the "high voltage" message.

I bet that our issue is related to using cheap otg cables.

If this helped you at all, or if you want me to write an article and/or blog post for you, send me an email at deuce@deucefuller.com

Answer 5

Very simple process. Buy an external USB connector/parallel cable for the Galaxy Note 10.1. Ebay has many ranging in price from a couple bucks and up. I bought a card reader + hub, has 3 usb ports and it will read sd/sd micro/tf/ms/and m2 cards. Less than 10 bucks. Buy a usb portable HDD. The key is that the hard drive MUST be formatted FAT32, NOT NTFS. You can format it using the cmd prompt, but it takes forever. Go out and download Verbatim's SmartDisk_FAT32_tool. (FREE) Connect the HDD to you PC and format it using the tool. Takes about 30 second with a 250 GB drive. I have not tried one larger as I had the 250 laying around. It works great. Remember: The note 10.1 will not read a HDD formatted NTFS. Depending on the HDD you may have to power it separately. I am running a SimpleTech 250 and I have to power it externally, but that is not a problem if you have an external power source.

Answer 6

In FAT 32 its maximum file size is 4GB, so i cant read files larger than 4GB. Any solution for large MKV files? or Any solution for NTFS hard disks? Thank you.