portable WD Easystore 5 TB external drive connect to Galaxy S9+

[Kyleca1]

Hi, i just bought a portable WD Easystore 5 TB external drive. I want to know if I can directly connect my Samsung Galaxy S9+ to it?

It connects via USB to my windows laptop but would rather connect it directly to my Galaxy s9+ in case I don't have my laptop with me.

I have a feeling that 5TB is more than my phone would recognize but thought I would ask anyway.

Sorry if I double posted this but I had to register.

Thanks,
Kyle

 

[anon(10614692)]

No, you will need an OTG adaptor for the phone to see the drive. You may have had one of these with the phone

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! It'll look something like this: www.samsung.com/au/support/mobile-devices/what-is-an-otg-on-the-go-cable/

 

[Kyleca1]

No, you will need an OTG adaptor for the phone to see the drive. You may have had one of these with the phone

Thanks for the suggestion. That worked but it doesn't recognize a windows format and my phone wants to reformat it. so I can't share it between windows and Android..

 

[B. Diddy]

It looks like the drive would have to be formatted as FAT32 or EXT4: https://7labs.io/mobile/android/con...t, Android OS can,in FAT32 or EXT4 filesystem.

 

[smvim]

Your S9 running Android will only include support for external devices that are formatted with ext4 (native file system to Linux and Android), and either FAT32 and exFAT (both being out-dated Microsoft file systems). Microsoft's current file system being NTFS, and isn't supported by Android. (Microsoft doesn't allow its licensing for NTFS to other platforms so all development to add support for it involves a lot of careful side-stepping around the copyright protections in place).

Just supposition but that 5TB external drive is probably formatted with NTFS so it's not being recognized by your phone. Using a Win PC, back up your data on that drive as a precaution, and reformat it so there's the remaining main NTFS partition along with an added, smaller FAT32 or exFAT partition that you can use to do file transfers involving your phone. Your phone will be able to access only that smaller partition, your WinPC will have full access to both.
Depending on how a large a smaller partition you want to add in, and what kinds of files you're going to be working with, note that FAT32 being even more dated than exFAT, it has partition size and file size limitations:
exFAT vs. FAT32 Comparison - NTFS.com
Also, there's a going to be an unavoidable metadata issue that involves file transfer between any different operating systems. Every OS handles file metadata a little differently so the native file system a file resides upon may influence what does or doesn't get retained. Just be consistent on your basic file and folder management.
.Are going to use a file manager app on your phone or the Windows File Explorer to do your file transfers? The former being a native to Android, the latter native to Windows.