Viewing File System through a Windows Laptop

Question

I have a HTC Desire X running Android 4.0.4 (not rooted). When I connect my phone to my Win7 Laptop, from my laptop, this is the filesystem I see

• LOST.DIR (Empty)

• Android\data\com.htc.album.thumbnails\

  • 00,01,02,03,04,05,06,07,08,09,11,12,12_720,carmode

• \DCIM\100MEDIA (Empty)

• .data\mail\attachthumb (Empty)

Where is the rest of my file system? The OS, the programs etc? Is there a way to view it from my laptop?

Answer 1

If your phone is not rooted, then you can't access the "OS" or the "programms". When you plug your phone, you can only browse its internal and/or external storage in a file explorer.

If you are not rooted, you can use adb to browse the "OS", but you can only view it and you can not access /data folder.

If you are rooted, you can access and write all to the internal parts of the system, but it's dangerous if you don't know what you are doing.

In every case, you can't see it through Windows Explorer.

Answer 2

As Shywim wrote, direct access from your Windows PC is limited to certain directories – by default. But there are some helpers available to give you more details. Some examples include:

• DavDrive Lite – make the local file system available via WebDAV. This would require another 3rd party tool on your Windows PC (some WebDAV client)
• FTPServer – a small and lightweight FTP server. I'm not sure how much of your internal storage can be exposed with this without root.
• AirDroid – access your files (and much more) via your web browser on the PC. AirDroid is a feature-loaded remote maintenance tool for your Android device, and does much more than just let you copy/paste files.
• As you're using Windows: MyPhoneExplorer Client might be worth a look as well. It requires a PC companion (available for free on their website), and offers you a lot of additional features to maintain your Android device remotely.

Of course, there would be other means. Also already mentioned was ADB. For this, you might want to take a look at QtADB as graphical frontend – and at Is there a minimal installation of ADB? for how to get ADB set up without too much overhead.