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I got my PC external storage port blocked.

However, there are some large files in my external drive that I need to transfer, and using cloud service is out of option.

I can use my phone to transfer files using adb, and I can connect to adb via wifi too. But since the files are in external drive, I will need to transfer it to my phone before I can transfer to my PC. It would be convenient if I can access the external drive directory when it connected to my phone via OTG. I try search /storage directory after connecting my OTG drive, but it only shows my local phone storage and my sd card.

Is it possible to to this?

Edit: Sorry if my question is a bit unclear here. I can access the files in my OTG drive in my phone using file manager. What I cannot do is access it via adb from my pc (I use adb connect to my phone from pc using wifi). I wish to be able do adb pull <otg-files> directly from my PC without have to copy the files from my OTG drive to my phone and then pull it via adb.

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  • What path is shown in the file-manager?
    – Robert
    Commented Jan 26, 2022 at 9:16
  • it's accessable only from usb://6CF7-DF3C and /mnt/media_rw/6CF7-DF3C but missing in /storage
    – alecxs
    Commented Jan 26, 2022 at 9:27
  • @Robert default file manager from my phone doesn't show path to any directory, my 3rd party file manager cannot access OTG files
    – ramonestra
    Commented Jan 26, 2022 at 9:35
  • @alecxs when I use adb shell ls /mnt it shows ls: /mnt/media_rw: Permission denied, what should I do about this?
    – ramonestra
    Commented Jan 26, 2022 at 9:37

1 Answer 1

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There are multiple potential problems that prevent the phone from seeing your external drive:

  1. The phone has to support USB OTG at all. I would recommend to test that using an simple USB stick.
  2. Power - If the external drive is an HDD then most likely the power provided by the phone via USB is too low and you need to play an active powered USB hub in between.
  3. The file-system used on the external drive: The file-systems supported by all Android systems is very small when it comes to file-systems usually used on external drives. If your PC is running Windows, then the external drive most likely uses NTFS, exFAT or FAT32. Only the latter is supported by all Android devices, exFAT is supported by some devices and NTFS is only supported by a very limited number of devices.

If you can see the external drive data in an app on the device you only have to find out the mount point. The fastest way is to list all mount points by executing mount in the shell via adb.

On my devices OTG devices are mounted in a directory within /mnt/media_rw/ for example /mnt/media_rw/9E00-B16F. Unfortunately the directory /mnt/media_rw/ is not accessible via adb on my device.

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  • Hello. I've edit my question a bit. I can access files in my OTG drive in my phone via file manager, but cannot access it via adb from my PC.
    – ramonestra
    Commented Jan 26, 2022 at 9:15

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