Compatible Flash Drive?

[OutaDaDark]

I have an Iomega 1 Terrabyte hard drive and several 80Gb, 160Gb and 320Gb drives that all work using USB Mount All.

They are variously formatted to FAT32 and NTFS.

..... and OP, try formatting your USB stick on the system your pal used to format his. Be careful with the HP Formatter, there are several different versions. There is a version onthe site of a company called WITSTECH. I have never had a problem with anything formatted with this program.

Good luck

G

 

[sandshoe]

There are some quite large capacity USB sticks around now - 128GB and even 256GB. These would be a good alternative to a portable HDD - smaller, lighter, tougher, etc. But will they work in an unrooted A500? (I have heard that anything bigger than 32GB won't format with FAT32, and anything that's not FAT32 won't be read by the tablet.)

 

[Icebike]

They all come formatted, and you can format them on windows or mac or linux.
There are utilities in the Android market that will let you format them.

 

[Jeffp25]

There are some quite large capacity USB sticks around now - 128GB and even 256GB. . . But will they work in an unrooted A500? (I have heard that anything bigger than 32GB won't format with FAT32, and anything that's not FAT32 won't be read by the tablet.)

As far as I know, no version of Android supports any file format with a larger capacity than FAT32, so you have a 32 GB limit. I know that you can root a tablet and add the ability to work with NTFS (which appears to be very easy on the A500), but I haven't tried it yet.

 

[Icebike]

As far as I know, no version of Android supports any file format with a larger capacity than FAT32, so you have a 32 GB limit.

WHOA, hold up there big fella!!!

FAT32 is by NO MEANS limited to 32GIG.

Limitations of the FAT32 File System in Windows XP

 

[Jeffp25]

The article you listed is old (pre-dating Vista). I have access to Windows XP and Win7 PCs, and neither let me format a drive in FAT32 with a partition bigger than 32 GB. So, while in theory FAT32 can be bigger than 32 GB, in practice, you'd need to find a very old PC, or locate some third party utility, to create a FAT32 partition bigger than 32 GB.

 

[sandshoe]

Thanks Icebike and Jeffp25. FWIW I just reformatted a 500GB external HDD to FAT32 using MiniTool Partition Wizard (with many thanks to Sabzafrica for the tip) and it is now recognised by my unrooted A500.

If it works for a HDD, there's no reason it wouldn't work for a flash drive, right?

 

[elsuirad]

My A500 Tablet was purchased from Houston, still unrooted and updated to 3.1 (and planning this week to have it root - Good lUck for me!)

And I asked my co-employee here in Algeria to buy me an 8GB MicroSD Card. When the card arrives, I inserted to to the Tablet (already have some files before inserting it) and it works without any problem. Now my tablet can copy/saved to it.

Will try to format my 360GB external HDD to FAT32 and hoping that it can be seen by my unit..

 

[SandraC]

The article you listed is old (pre-dating Vista). I have access to Windows XP and Win7 PCs, and neither let me format a drive in FAT32 with a partition bigger than 32 GB. So, while in theory FAT32 can be bigger than 32 GB, in practice, you'd need to find a very old PC, or locate some third party utility, to create a FAT32 partition bigger than 32 GB.

I just formatted a 1tb..that's TB USB hard drive on my Win7 64bit system and and now the usb drive isFAT32. I then reformatted to NTFS & brought it out to my Win XP machine and reformatted it to FAT32 again. No third party was needed for XP but I did use MiniTools on my WIN7 to get the fat32 option.

Sent from my A501 using Android Tablet Forum

 

[Douvie]

As far as I know, no version of Android supports any file format with a larger capacity than FAT32, so you have a 32 GB limit. I know that you can root a tablet and add the ability to work with NTFS (which appears to be very easy on the A500), but I haven't tried it yet.

Jeff

Ithink you may be a little confused. Android is Linux ( oops sorry the "L" word). Linux supports ginormous drives. Has trouble writing to NTFS - let me correct that "will not write to NTFS formatted drives. The new Honeycomb can actually read NTFS.

 

[Douvie]

Just hibernate the tablet, wait 50 seconds until the drive stops flashing, unplug USB stick/drive, unhibernate tablet. No problem it works for me .

 

[Douvie]

I just formatted a 1tb..that's TB USB hard drive on my Win7 64bit system and and now the usb drive isFAT32. I then reformatted to NTFS & brought it out to my Win XP machine and reformatted it to FAT32 again. No third party was needed for XP but I did use MiniTools on my WIN7 to get the fat32 option.

Sent from my A501 using Android Tablet Forum

I just plugged my 2TB WD USB drive into the tablet. With 3.2 I can now access my NTFS drives without having to format them.

 

[SandraC]

I'm still waiting for Acer AU to send update my way. Still using 3.0.1 because they didn't send 3.1 update notice to me supposedly because my tablet is the 501 rather than the 500. But I use DriveMount for ntfs but don't really see the necessity for huge external storage. I mean seriously how much room does a 32gb tablet need?

Sent from my A501 using Android Tablet Forum

 

[Icebike]

Jeff

Ithink you may be a little confused. Android is Linux ( oops sorry the "L" word). Linux supports ginormous drives. Has trouble writing to NTFS - let me correct that "will not write to NTFS formatted drives. The new Honeycomb can actually read NTFS.

Linux has no trouble writing to NTFS for the last several years.
Open Source ntfs-3g is on most linux distros, and there are several alternative (commercial) solutions as well.
[Phoronix] Tuxera Claims NTFS Is The Fastest File-System For Linux

 

[Douvie]

Linux has no trouble writing to NTFS for the last several years.
Open Source ntfs-3g is on most linux distros, and there are several alternative (commercial) solutions as well.
[Phoronix] Tuxera Claims NTFS Is The Fastest File-System For Linux

Sorry Icebike,

I maybe mistaken but I've used RED HAT/FEDORA and still there are problems with writing to NTFS but no problems reading from. I have a LINUX PC at home just for me to use LINUX - the rest are win.

But I'm willing to suggest that I'm uninformed and you may be right.