Ok so my title kinda sucks, but here is the situation.
I have an Android on a stick(iMito MX1) attached to my TV. I have a USB hub and two hard drives attached.
Each time I boot the drives swap SDA and SDB. Is there any way to stop the drives from doing that as it is messing up my mount points and reversing my movie/aps locations.
I am using an app called NtfsSd to mount one of the drives as /sdcard. So far this is working great as it allows apps to use the 750G NTFS drive as a place for the apps extras and aps2SD(built into JB rom). But if the power goes out or I reboot the device and the deviceID of the two drives swap then the other USB drive acts as the SDCARD and it messes up aps2sd.
NtfsSd would be perfect for a single drive, but in this situation it points to dev/block/sda1 but when I reboot sda1 might be the other USB drive. So how do I force one of the USB drive to always use sda1???
I looked everywhere but nothing seems to work. Udev is not supported on android so no go there. And trying to get a UUID for fstab seems to be a dead end but even then the app is looking for a particular sd* device.
I am really at wits end on this and totally stumped. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Related
Folks,
I don't claim to be an expert on the microiSD card, but there are some things
that need to be said -- and if I don't get it all or get it right then other folks
need to jump in.
1. Care always need to be taken putting your microSD card in and out. Not
only is it small and fragile, but the slot is small as well. You sometimes may
have to use your fingernail or something else thin to ease it far enough in
against the spring to get it to "click" into place. Same thing in reverse for
removal.
2. YOU CANNOT JUST PLUG AND UNPLUG THE FULL SIZE USB STUFF IN ANDROID.
They are not "Plug and Play" like Windows. I don't know the final word, but on
the full size USB port -- when I put in a USB key -- I always shut down, plug it in,
then reboot.
The miniUSB you use to your PC is a little more flexible, but that's another
post for another time.
3. You can use the microSD for recovery, but you have to edit the recovery
command file to point to /SDCARD2. When you boot standard recovery, Android
checks the internal memory for a recovery/command and update.zip presence.
If it does not find them, the it looks for a microSD external card and if it finds it
then it checks for recovery/command and update.zip file there.
4. Different ROMS have different capabilities with regard to finding and using the
USB ports. You'll have to research that -- or maybe someone will fill in that
blank here.
I hope this helps. I know this is not all the info on /SDCARD2 -- but I hope it
get the discussion going to help those having problems.
Rev
Good Topic! May want to add mention that /SDCARD2 does not normally mount to your PC when the tablet is connected for file transfers (I've seen that question 3 or 4 times in the past few days). There are some apps that allow it but I've run into some serious issues with a couple of them up to and including corruption of the internal memory.
#2 - the large USB port... I'm not an expert on this either but I do have two flash drives that will not mount if they're inserted with the tablet off. They do work fine when inserted with it on. So there is at least some level of auto-detect and mount going on I'm just not sure to what degree. It is on the list for further study. I would definitely err on the side of caution on this one with regards to anything containing important data.
#3 could be expanded to include or link to a how to on making your own recovery/utility MicroSD (another thread?). This could really save some folks some time and anguish.
+1 placeholder
+2 placeholder.
I won't bump it again. Just want those who need this to have the opportunity to
read it.
Rev
If SDCARD2 does not mount to your PC, how do you get the PC to recognize it so that you can store media files from your PC? Thanks!
mebrat said:
If SDCARD2 does not mount to your PC, how do you get the PC to recognize it so that you can store media files from your PC? Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I understand your question correctly, you must get a standard sd holder for your micro sd (usually comes with the micro, but not always), and then you need a card reader with a usb plug to go into your computer.
snarful,
Yes. In my case an adapter came with the microSD card and I have a card reader
on my PC -- so I'm good to go.
But if you are going to do much with the cards, it really helps and speeds things up.
Rev
Is it possible to mount 2 usb drives simultaneously in android thru a hub? I have a nook color
(my sons) that runs cm7. I use nook tweaks to enable usb host and have a home made otg adapter. I can mount one drive (sandisk cruzer 8GB) thru a hub along with a keyboard and mouse.
I think i'm on the right track but i'm lost. I think I need to make a second mount point in mnt. I tried making another folder called usbdisk2 but i don't know what else needs to be done. I read somewhere about making a symlink.
The reason I want to mount 2 drives is so I can copy files from one to the other instead of mounting one drive, copy from the drive to the nook, then mounting the second drive and copying from the nook to the second drive.
Please use the Q&A Forum for questions Thanks
Moving to Q&A
So I bought an OTG cable for the first time yesterday, and I tested it with a pendrive. I could access the pen with Root Explorer, on /mnt/ntfs/sda1, but there was no option to mount/unmount the drive (the android system did ask me to erase the pen because it had a damaged filesystem, but I could access it with no problems with Root Explorer).
So what I want is to be able to unmount the device so I don't damage it over time, or properly mount it on a more logical path so I can use it with other apps.
I also tried an WD HDD of 1.5TB and the same thing happen, I could access it on the same path but no mount/unmount options anywhere. Not even "filesystem is damaged" warning this time.
I have tried with some Play Store apps (root required ones) but no luck.
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
Also, I want to be able to mount FAT32 filesystems and to be able to write on NTFS ones. I have tried almost all of the Play Store apps but all of them crashed or didn't work. The only thing that works on my phone is the auto-mounting of NTFS filesystems in R/O, because of the SiyadKernel. No other filesystems or functions.
Is there any way of doing this?
Thanks.
I posted this on the Nexus7 pages, but I wonder if it might be better in a general android page .
I have a nexus 7 that i'm utilising in a car build.
It's running CM10.1 which I believe is based on 4.2.2, and Timurs custom Kernel.
I have a 175gb SSD dive, hooked up to a USB hub and OTG cable.
The SSD is recognised and mounts correctly on the Nexus via the kernel.
I'm looking to speed up the mount process.
When I connect the SSD, the led activity light on the SSD will start to blink rapidly, any media on the drive is inaccessible until the drive activity has ceased.
This process takes around 30 seconds or more.
The drive is formatted using exFat, with a single partition.
I've placed a number of .nomedia files inside the USBDISK folder, SDCARD folder, and in the root of the USB drive itself, but still mounting takes time.
Is there a way to speed up the mounting process.
Maybe moving the media folders inside a single folder, or some sort of file (like .nomedia) inside the folder structure to tell Android to not perform a file check and just mount it regardless.
Maybe a cache system.
The kernel is configured to have the drive in read only mode, so unless I manually add any files, then I have no need to scan for any file changes.
The drive could be in the car for months before I add any new media to it.
I noticed last night, when I connect the HDD to my Windows 7 PC, no such disk activity takes place.
The drive is mounted, and ready to access within seconds.
Thinking that the drive activity could be folder related, I created a new folder in the root named .files, and then moved all my data in to it.
However, the tablet is still performing some sort of laborious disk activity when the drive is connected.
This now has me thinking...
When a disk is mounted in Android, is it a real mount of a virtual one.
If it's a virtual one, then I guess the system needs to build the directory listing and populate this in a virtual folder ??
I guess no one else has experienced this, or I posted in the wrong forum, but i think i figured it out.
Just incase someone else has the same problem in the future, and in the vain hope that they stumble across this thread, I think it's only fair that I post my findings.
My SSD drive is formatted exFat for compatibilty between my PC, Tablet and S7 phone which is on Marshmallow.
I have 2 hard drives, I have a 2.5" SSD and a standard 2.5" Sata drive.
So something to experiment with.
I have 2 hard drives, I have a 2.5" SSD and a standard 2.5" Sata drive.
So something to experiment with.
Formatting the standard hard drive as NTFS and then copying a small number of my files on to it, i noticed that the mount time was instant, with hardly any drive activity.
All files are accessable.
It makes little sense, considering a standard mechanical drive is supposedly slower than SSD.
I then formatted it exFat, and copied roughly the same number of files, but now the mount time was about 5 seconds, with the drive light activity issue.
I reformatted my SSD as NTFS, copied my files back on to it, and the mount time is still almost instantaneous.
So it looks like whatever is causing the extended mount time is asscociated with exFat.
I've no idea why, so if anyone can explain, i'll be happy to learn.
somehow exfat formatted disk is checked for errors on android every time it mounts.
I have a lenovo A10 Tab 2 upgraded to MM. I have su installed.
When I plug in an external usb drive, programs like vlc cannot find it as they do not seem to have access to /mnt or simply do not bother looking in it. I have a USB with music that I Would like to create playlists for and do other things(since I have multiple USB drives with various uses).
What I'd like to is is be able to create a permanent mount to the usb port to a useful place that I can easily access as well as other programs. I'd like to do this for the sdcard too.
One thing I hate is these "random" hex string representing the devices. I never know what is what.
I have tried to use mount -t /mnt/1DVE-4323 /drives/USBDrive
and get operation not permitted
I've tried to go in to /dev/block/vold/public:8,1 and mount that but same issue or other issues.
I've tried creating a symlink using ln -s but same issues.
executing mount by itself lists quite a bit of stuff and it does show the mount point to the 1DVE-4323 which I guess android creates internally when the usb drive is inserted but I can't mount that put.
I'm using terminal emulator and call su from the start.
All I want is to be able to access these damn devices in a convenient way but it's damn near impossible It really shouldn't be that difficult(in fact, I shouldn't have to go to the terminal). While I can use explorers to explore the disk I tend to have to bookmark things because stuff is just not organized in a natural way. (either hex values for drive names or things like emulated or usbtg, etc... most of which tend to be empty and I never remember what is what).
What would be awesome is if I had 3 directories like
/root which took me to the system root
/usbdrive which took me to the usb drive
/sdcard which too me to the sd card
and that these could easily be found by every other program.
or possibly
/drives/root
/drives/sd_internal
/drives/usb
/drives/sd_external
Any ideas how to achieve nirvana?