[How To] Mount MTP/PTP as a drive letter or USB Mass Storage (UMS)

[A-Train]

I've spent the last 2 freakin days trying to figure out how to use my 3rd party system tools on my android device with no results. I had to do research on what exactly MTP was and how it works. Then I did about 20 different kinds of searches, which ended lasting about 2 days, 8 hours a day... that's too much time. Why? Well, after hearing the cries of people needing to recover data and people needing to securely wipe data, I needed to find a solution. I am one of those that needed to securely wipe data.

I came across a company called "Cranking Pixels". I DO NOT, IN ANY WAY, REPRESENT THEM OR VOUCH FOR THEM. Just wanted to get that out there. I found their company from Cnet and their software called PTPdrive: http://download.cnet.com/PTPdrive/3000-2193_4-10973243.html

As I mentioned, I do not, in any way, vouch for this software. Nobody has reviewed them, anywhere, on the internet. I did a ton of research and found nothing. I am currently doing an Acronis backup of my entire drive so if anything goes bad, then I'm ok. If anything goes bad on my phone, then I'm ok with that. I'll be your test subject for this experiment.

They also have a software called MTPdrive, which I will actually be using for this experiment, not the PTPdrive, as that is what I need to wipe my phone. Here's the link: http://www.mtpdrive.com/ Once again, I do not represent nor vouch for them.

Once I'm done with my Acronis, I will download, plugin, use CCleaner, and if the world doesn't explode, I will come back with the results.

With me luck.

I'm only doing a test on the MTPdrive software, not the PTPdrive software.
Use at your own risk.

 

[A-Train]

Re: Solution to Mounting MTP/PTP as a drive letter/USB Mass Storage [Please Verify]

Well, I installed with no damage so far. Currently doing an eset virus scan with Version 7.0.317.4 with signature 11221. I can't get the MTPdrive software to recognize my phone. My phone is currently on Android Version 4.0.4 Model Number MB865. I still have the option of UMS on this test phone, which, if I select it, nothing pops up (currently no SD card in there). I'm thinking the internal memory is not accessible on this phone at all, or unless the SD card is installed. I had an error when the windows phone driver was installing. Perhaps that's the problem? I'm going to transfer the SD card over and see what happens.

 

[A-Train]

Re: Solution to Mounting MTP/PTP as a drive letter/USB Mass Storage [Please Verify]

It freaking works!!! Pictures to come!!!

 

[A-Train]

Re: Solution to Mounting MTP/PTP as a drive letter/USB Mass Storage [Please Verify]

Alright, so far so good! No problems! If the anti-virus comes back good, then we'll be good to go! I've started the free space wipe process on the phone's SD card. I got an error however.

The volume does not contain a recognized file system. Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted.

When I go to device manager I see an exclamation mark next to "Motorola Networking Interface". I'll go look for a driver for my phone after I'm done with these pictures.



I went ahead and installed the Motorola drivers and fixed the error in the device manager section. I went ahead and attempted to do a wipe again and came up with the same error. I went and looked in the disk management section and found no trace of my drive. Ideas guys?

 

[A-Train]

Re: Solution to Mounting MTP/PTP as a drive letter/USB Mass Storage [Please Verify]

All finished with the scan! I have a LOT of hard drives that need scanned so it took a while. Below are the scans.



My scan shows my system clean but that doesn't always mean that it's a safe program.

The program didn't do what i wanted it to do - I couldn't get ccleaner to clean the phone. Perhaps there's a problem with that phone? I'm scared to try my other phone, the phone that I actually care about. Let's try it and see what happens. I'll let you know in a few.

 

[Rukbat]

Re: Solution to Mounting MTP/PTP as a drive letter/USB Mass Storage [Please Verify]

Exactly what are you trying to do? Wipe your data partition? Wipe a folder? MTP and PTP aren't "things", they're ways of doing things, you can't wipe them.

 

[A-Train]

Re: Solution to Mounting MTP/PTP as a drive letter/USB Mass Storage [Please Verify]

Howdy Rukbat. There's dozens of posts of people trying to either recover lost data on their devices (whether it be phones or cameras) or trying to wipe data from their devices. Android has moved away from UMS to MTP, which makes data recovery impossible from an external source, such as a computer. What people have been wanting is a way to overcome this impossibility. If my journey leads to a dead end, then people will know that this route is just a road block, not a complete failure of trying to find a solution to mapping a drive letter to MTP (mounting).

Below I connected my phone to my computer with my SD card. Here's the result.



I was able to mount and successfully map both the internal storage and the SD card to drive letters. Hurray!!! I can FINALLY have all the options I want, unlike the other options.



I decided to go ahead and do a virus scan on the drive. I had these results:



Apparently the limitations of the trial version prevent me from doing a full scan of the phone. This is the result:



I'm not sure what to make of this software. Are the problems because of the trail? Are the problems because of the program? Or are the problems because of the MTP itself? Not sure. I'm not going to upgrade because I don't know if it's going to do any good.

Anyway, that's my two cents. Hope this helps guys. Let me know if this helps you guys.

 

[CrankingPixels]

Re: Solution to Mounting MTP/PTP as a drive letter/USB Mass Storage [Please Verify]

I am pointing out upfront that I am representing the company behind the MTPdrive. Here are some details:

The PTP/MTP protocol allows transferring objects (=files) and accessing object properties (=file size, date/time, etc.). The smallest entity it can work with is an object, there is no concept of a physical filesystem nor sectors. Reading/writing a file requires transferring the whole object/file, random or partial object/file access is not possible.

The MTPdrive enables accessing these objects via *virtual* filesystem. It emulates the device's file/directory structure only. Any attempt to access physical sectors of this MTPdrive-mapped drive results in error because it is not supported. This means that any data recovery software requiring direct file system/sector access will fail. Wiping out/scanning the device file by file is supported though, but the trial version of the MTPdrive only allows accessing 30 files. If the device contains more files you would get the read errors when accessing files over the limit.

Hope this helps.
Ivo, CrankingPixels

 

[A-Train]

Re: Solution to Mounting MTP/PTP as a drive letter/USB Mass Storage [Please Verify]

Thank you so much for replying!

Is there a way, at all, in the future, for your MTPdrive software to overcome the limitations of the MTP protocol and allow a person to do a data recovery, or am I perhaps just dreaming an empty dream?

 

[CrankingPixels]

Re: Solution to Mounting MTP/PTP as a drive letter/USB Mass Storage [Please Verify]

Unfortunately the data recovery cannot work over the PTP/MTP protocol, its too "high level" for this kind of operation.

Frankly I am not sure why the Android switched from the Mass Storage (MSC) to the PTP/MTP in the first place. Maybe it is easier to implement it on the device side, or perhaps cheaper when not paying royalties for using the FAT filesystem. Either way, this is in Android's hands and neither Microsoft nor Cranking Pixels can do anything about it.

Regards,
Ivo, Cranking Pixels

 

[Ganapathi Ram]

Re: Solution to Mounting MTP/PTP as a drive letter/USB Mass Storage [Please Verify]

Hello A - Train,
While reading ur article at the beginning, I was amazed & somehow got the confidence of restoring my lost data from my Samsung Note 3 / Android v5 device. I installed MTP drive & successfully connected my phone with PC.
With that I couldn't able to recover my lost data. We can only do scanning & not restoring. With this mapping, I tried to recover data thru another software(Remo recover for Android) but again its not detecting the device though i enabled "USB Debugging" from developer option.
So there is no option in the whole world to recover the lost data from Android internal memory? Is it so? Please help. I'm badly in need of lost photos / videos.
Simply I lost my memories.

There is no point in using such smart phone when datas are not recoverable. I have not deleted , the datas were gone / vanished all of a sudden from the folder "camera" of phone internal memory

Thanks!

 

[Ganapathi Ram]

Re: Solution to Mounting MTP/PTP as a drive letter/USB Mass Storage [Please Verify]

So there is no option in the whole world to recover the lost data from Android internal memory? Please help.

Thanks!

 

[Daniel Kahn]

I am also baffled by not being able to recover files from my Nexus 6. Is there no way around this problem?
BR
DK

 

[ellyenne]

Re: Solution to Mounting MTP/PTP as a drive letter/USB Mass Storage [Please Verify]

Thank you so much for this concise and useful reply. Now I understand better what a useless piece of not-software MTP file protocol is. I am completely furious @ Google for crippling one of the most useful and amazing aspects of the Android operating system. They have turned my Droid into something worst than an iPhone, because my LG G4 will not connect to my computer in any mode other than charging. I've had techs from Verizon, LG, Google, Apple all fail to get them to talk.
Luckily, I put everything I want to keep on an external SD card. I just pull it out and plug it into my computer. This does not help with internal memory, but then I don't keep anything important on internal memory.
So add my voice to those who hate that our Androids are crippled with Windows transfer protocols and reduced to the status of iPhones.

 

[K Rusere]

other than recuva is there any other software i can use for file recovery

 

[weirdroid]

Re: Solution to Mounting MTP/PTP as a drive letter/USB Mass Storage [Please Verify]

I thought the reason Android uses MTP/PTP instead of Mass Storage is due to the storage becoming unavailable to the Android system when mounted as a disk drive to a USB host. With MTP or PTP, files can be accessed and transferred without disconnecting storage data from the phone. Does that make sense? I liked how my old HTC Evo LTE device gave me the option of mounting the SD Card as a disk drive which allowed me to run backup software. No longer on my newer Galaxy Note 5 which only allows MTP or PTP. I might buy MTPDrive so I can use regular backup software again.

 

[ghostanime2001]

Re: Solution to Mounting MTP/PTP as a drive letter/USB Mass Storage [Please Verify]

I want to transfer files with the date created, date modified and date accessed fields in file properties remain exactly the same as the original date and time stamps. When I use MTPdrive, only the date created, date modified is the same. What about date accessed ? thank you

*im using a samsung galaxy note 2 model sgh-i317m on android 4.4.2

 

[billant]

Re: Solution to Mounting MTP/PTP as a drive letter/USB Mass Storage [Please Verify]

I want to transfer files with the date created, date modified and date accessed fields in file properties remain exactly the same as the original date and time stamps. When I use MTPdrive, only the date created, date modified is the same. What about date accessed ? thank you

*im using a samsung galaxy note 2 model sgh-i317m on android 4.4.2

BillA to the rescue!! he-he...
So I had the same issue, where I wanted all 3 date/time stamps (Access, Creation, Write) to be equal to the WRITE stamp as it appears on the MTP/SDCard. In order to achieve this, I'm using an app called ZTree (ZTreeWin File Manager (XTree compatible)) a funky old DOS looking yet really powerful file manager to copy the files through MTPDrive. Once it's done, I fully log the copied folders, tag all the files with Ctrl+T, press Ctrl+N for new date/time, press Tab once to select the WRITE stamp as the source (or whichever one you want), press F4 3 times to set ALL 3 stamps to the WRITE date/time, which seems to be the only one copied correctly by MTPDrive.
It may seem a bit complicated at first, but once done a few times it's really simple.
As a bonus you can adjust all 3 data/time stamps to be completely identical or different if so desired. Hope this will help someone.

 

[ghostanime2001]

Re: Solution to Mounting MTP/PTP as a drive letter/USB Mass Storage [Please Verify]

BillA to the rescue!! he-he...
So I had the same issue, where I wanted all 3 date/time stamps (Access, Creation, Write) to be equal to the WRITE stamp as it appears on the MTP/SDCard. In order to achieve this, I'm using an app called ZTree (ZTreeWin File Manager (XTree compatible)) a funky old DOS looking yet really powerful file manager to copy the files through MTPDrive. Once it's done, I fully log the copied folders, tag all the files with Ctrl+T, press Ctrl+N for new date/time, press Tab once to select the WRITE stamp as the source (or whichever one you want), press F4 3 times to set ALL 3 stamps to the WRITE date/time, which seems to be the only one copied correctly by MTPDrive.
It may seem a bit complicated at first, but once done a few times it's really simple.
As a bonus you can adjust all 3 data/time stamps to be completely identical or different if so desired. Hope this will help someone.

is there a guide or document on how to use ZTreeWin ? thanks...

 

[Tromick]

Bump! Is there any way to mount /data as drive letter and recover files from data partition?