Accessing an external hard drive (500GB)

[Rodmhar]

I recently got my hands on a USB adaptor for my phablet (I hate that term) and tried to connect a Seagate Portable External Drive. I was excited until a notification appeared saying that it was either blank or has an unsupported filesystem. Can anyone help me so I can access this? I love watching movies but my internal memory is full with games and the external with music. I saw several videos and apps detailing the process but I did not root my device because I am tied to a contract and I fear that once they discover that my device is rooted they will deny me the warranty or a replacement if ever I needed one. I do not despise the idea of rooting but I'm not so skilled in using the computer and for someone like me, I think it would cause more hassle than the benefits of it. Thanks in advance.

 

[SpookDroid]

Most of the time the reason is that the hard-drive is formatted for use with a Windows PC. Check your hard drive's format on a PC; if it says it's NTFS, then your Android device will never recognize it (NTFS is Microsoft's own tech, and has not been licensed to be used with Android). So, to be able to use your hard-drive with your Note, you'd have to format it to something that it will recognize and that will play 'nice' with your PC as well, so exFAT is usually the way to go (FAT-32 is more popular but it limits the file size).