USB Mass Storage Bug in Vibrant?

[namyawon]

For any of you who have the Vibrant, please tell me if you've encountered this issue:

I tried to connect my Vibrant to my MacBook to transfer photos and music. But neither the SD card, nor the internal storage mount. This always worked fine with my MyTouch. I thought it might be a Mac thing, so I tried it on my Windows 7 PC. Same thing. A Nexus One worked fine as well. I brought the Vibrant back to the T-Mo store where they gave me a replacement. Same problem! Can't mount any storage on my Mac or PC to transfer files.

Two guys at the T-Mo store and a third on their support line could not get this to work, so I reluctantly returned the phone as this is a show-stopper for me. One of the guys is going for training on the phone this week and will try to find a solution.

Is this a bug or did T-Mo/Samsung deliberately disable this feature? It makes no sense as to why they would do it deliberately, but then again, why did they ship it with no camera flash?

Shame though... it's a great device otherwise.

 

[bergie33#AC]

I am new to Android, so please excuse my not knowing the names for some of the screens, etc.

After connecting to the computer with the USB, if you bring down the menu from the top (click at the top of the screen, where the USB sumbol is, and drag down), there will be an option to mount the SD card.

I have had no problems mouting the storage and transferring files. That is on a PC.

 

[KCphotog]

My mac doesn't see the phone but kicking on parallels and win7 finds it no problem. Pics up both internal and external memory. Seems like a bug in the phone.

 

[jones4campn]

I had the same problem at first and was very scared. My macbook wouldn't recognize any type of connection, even in disk utility. Then i read in another forum how to fix and i now have no issues:
Go to Settings/Applications/Development - and make sure USB debugging is checked. Then, if USB connection setting is set to Mass Storage, you should be able to see it connect to the macbook.
Weird fix - but easy and effective.

 

[KCphotog]

I had the same problem at first and was very scared. My macbook wouldn't recognize any type of connection, even in disk utility. Then i read in another forum how to fix and i now have no issues:
Go to Settings/Applications/Development - and make sure USB debugging is checked. Then, if USB connection setting is set to Mass Storage, you should be able to see it connect to the macbook.
Weird fix - but easy and effective.

Was coming back in to edit my post with the same info. See's both and works perfect.

 

[AndroidBoricua]

I get two drives that mount, but I still can't access the card or the phone.

 

[cryptonyt3]

I have the same problem connecting to usb using my Mac. As for now in order to transfer music, photos, or movies; I use Bluetooth File Exchange.

 

[daenigma]

Pull the notification bar down and click the usb it will then ask if you want to mount...

I had the same problem with connecting the phone to the wife's PC. It would show the SD card and the internal memory as drives, but I could not access them.

Doing the above fixed the problem.

 

[rbcamping]

I have the same problem. I was on the phone with TM technical support and had no luck. They told me to contact Samsung. I saw this thread and tried everything listed and it still wont work. I called Samsung this morning and their technical department had no luck also. They are going to have a different department call me on Monday. I'll let you know what happens

 

[Tom7]

It appears that many of the people posting "fixes" here have only read the original post, and aren't aware of what others have posted later in the discussion.

I had the EXACT problem the original poster had, trying to place files on my Vibrant with an iMac, Macbook, a Thinkpad and an HP desktop PC.

Of COURSE I pulled down the status line to mount the SD card each time, but the Vibrant just wasn't going to be seen by a USB connected computer other than to charge from it.

Thankfully, Jones4campn's solution works. He it is again:

(1) Go to Settings
(2) Choose Applications
(3) Choose Development
(4) Enable "USB debugging" (so it is checked)

Now when you connect the Vibrant to a computer via USB, you can mount the device and it will show up in Finder as a device.

In fact it will show up twice: one device is the phone's internal storage, and the other device is the phones installed SD card.

To avoid confusion, I renamed the SD card so I could instantly tell which device was which.

By the way, my Mac also popped up the following message:

"A new network interface has been detected. The 'SAMSUNG_Android' network interface has not been set up. To set up this interface, use Network Preferences."

I just clicked "Cancel" and everything worked perfectly after that.

Hope this helps; I'd like to see you get your Vibrant back. It is a GREAT phone; the first time I've been content with a virtual keyboard.

 

[Downrange]

Thanx! I had the same problem today!

 

[purplejetta]

I've had issues when the phone has "enable usb debugging" checked. I work for a software company and our QA dept was going to put a beta version on my phone but they couldn't get the pc to recognize that the device was plugged in. Trying to find and install a driver just got them into an endless loop. I had the same issue when I tried to tether my phone to my Win 7 netbook. Had no issues w prior G1 device. I found and installed a driver, but still kept getting the prompt over and over to install a driver. USB debugging has to be checked in order to run PDANet. Fortunately I was able to get it to recognize the phone after about 10 tries and reinstalls of the driver. I haven't had any problems mounting the phone as a usb storage device on my XP work machine or my Windows Vista desktop. Weird stuff.

 

[Alzarius]

OK, now my phone is really starting to frustrate me.

I've had it for 2 weeks, and it has ALWAYS been able to mount to my PC (vista 32bit) without any hiccups.

Today, I cannot get it to mount at all!

I swipe the top menu bar, tap on the "USB selected" and select mount. That usually brings up a window on my PC to allow me to transfer files to and from the Vibrant.

Today, nothing happened after I selected mount. The phone behaves like it is mounted (e.g. cannot view files), but no window pops up on my PC.

I've tried changing the USB settings on the phone to see if it works. I usually have it on mass storage, but tried media player, samsung kies, and also ask on connection, but none of those fixed the issue. Also tried to enable USB debugging, and that did not work either!!! Tried shutting down my PC and restarting it several times, and still doesn't work. Also tried using different USB ports on my computer, and still doesn't work.


For those that had this problem and was able to fix it with the USB debugging option, was it with a MAC? I'm using a PC, and I cannot get it to work with that option either.

Anyone have any other solutions??

thanks.


edit: OK... oh my god. I turned the phone off, and turned it back on..... AND IT WORKED!! Insane. 2 other things I was going to try was buy a new cable, and maybe restore my phone to factory settings to see if that will fix it. But I just remembered I had not tried to turn my phone off, and on yet.... and that worked. Jeez

 

[richardrahl]

Internal storage won't mount, SD is fine

i'm having the same issue that many describe except that the SD storage works fine but the internal 12GBs that is on the phone doesn't mount. I tried the USB debug thing but that didn't help. i have the drivers installed but I still have yellow error in my device manager. Any thoughts?

Thank you

 

[bcohea]

After installing the correct drivers (below), turning USB debugging ON, setting transfer mode to mass storage, and mounting after connecting with USB I was able to get mine to work perfectly. Hope it helps

Samsung USB drivers (x86 + x64 versions):

[Drivers] MS Windows x86 and x64 USB Drivers for Samsung Galaxy S - xda-developers