External USB hard drive connection issues

[Dan L2]

Hello

I am having an issue trying to connect a Seagate 2TB usb external hard drive to my Pixel XL.

Ive read that you need to ensure it is formated to exfat which I did but when I connect it to my Pixel it creates all these wonky folders (image attached)

Is there a way to get this to work correctly?

Thanks

 

[Dan L2]

Hopefully image attached correctly this time.

 

[B. Diddy]

Are you connecting with an OTG adapter? Can you try a different adapter?

 

[Dan L2]

Hi. I'm using the adapter that came with the phone. Unfortunately I do not have an alternative to try. My phone reads SD cards when connected.


When the hard drive was not formated correctly for the phone the phone would attempt to read it and then it would reset and it was like it was trying to use the hard drive. The phone would get stuck at the G logo loading screen.

 

[B. Diddy]

The rebooting issue seems to be well-described here: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/15554741?hl=en. But I can't find anything about those apparent junk folders when the drive is formatted exFAT. Can you create any new folders and save anything to the drive, or do they all end up being 0 bytes?

 

[mustang7757]

The USB OTG might be ok to access stock files , but using USB OTG for external might need root and app that could read the files , not 100 percent but that's my thinking

 

[Kizzy Catwoman]

Hi. I use an external ssd with my pixel. I found that in order to use it the phone automatically formatted the drive for me. I didn't get those odd files. Is this a spinning hard drive or an ssd one? I am wondering if that makes a difference. I will warn you though, that any drive formatted for a pixel will only read on a chromebook and not a windows PC. I don't know the full reason why but that is what happens. It formats it to an Android disk.

I would either use a cheap ssd in a caddy (which is what I use. 240GB is about £30 and a caddy for it is about £8) or use a USB flash drive. I don't know if the pixel has enough power to power a spinning hard drive.

Sorry I can't offer any more help. You could try and reformat the drive again and see if it does the same thing.

Good Luck.

 

[mustang7757]

Try a app like this


https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.paragon.tcplugins_ntfs_ro

 

[Kizzy Catwoman]

Mine looks like this when I plug it in. As I said it is an SSD

 

[Dan L2]

Thanks all for the replies. When I connect the hard drive to my Pixel the screen pops up asking what I want to use the usd drive as and then states I need to formate the hard drive.

When I click on formate it just stays stuck at 20% then all those whacky folders get created.

 

[Kizzy Catwoman]

Ah. Sounds like there is an issue there then. Dunno what to suggest. Sorry.