Speed up USB Disk Mount - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

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.

Related

[Q] Using phone as a iso reader

Guys I searched in forums and I couldn't find a good thread (except mikob2d's thread)
You know when you disable usb debugging and then pluging usb cable and mount, Pc shows internal sd, external sd also a cdrom image. I know we can change internal external mounts but is there a way to change cdrom image? I've a ultrabook which hasn't got a optical drive, but it can mount sd cards also the cdrom image when I plugged my phone. I want to use my phone as a cdrom. If any developers interested, I want to help too.
Think about an app which selects iso files and then when you plug you phone via usb, pc saw phone's sd cards and also that chosen iso file as a cdrom.
Thank you for reading, I check my messages everyday.
You can mount isos to a virtual optical drive within Windows with various apps, I use Virtual CloneDrive:
http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html
I'm not sure why you would want to do this from Android, seems like it would be more of a pain to have to transfer the iso file over.
Dude I know daemon methods but our phones can do this, And also you can't use Operating System based virtualization methods. Thus I need a external solution which can be a external optic drive but hey, our phones alredy does that. Just a little script can make the magic. also USB transfer speeds are low but sdcard transfer speeds are quite faster. Also this is a poweruser level request.
If I am right the cd image includes software drivers for the phone in that case you could find the file (which I am assuming is a image file) on the phone that it is using then replace it with a symlink to your cd image.
To figure out which file I would use a terminal to check the output of "lsof" when it is mounted on your computer to see possible filenames.
shadowofdarkness said:
If I am right the cd image includes software drivers for the phone in that case you could find the file (which I am assuming is a image file) on the phone that it is using then replace it with a symlink to your cd image.
To figure out which file I would use a terminal to check the output of "lsof" when it is mounted on your computer to see possible filenames.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's what I'm saying. I can find it easily but I was thinking can I change the mount script. A little program which chooses the iso files from sdcard and mounts these isos instead of manifacturer's driver iso.

USB drives change after boot, how to stop it?

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.

Taking Ownership of EXT3 in Android

I recently purchased a Pivos Xios Android Media Center. I bought it to replace my Popcorn Hour Network Media Tank. I had been using a 1 terabyte drive in the NMT, which the Linux back end of the NMT had formatted to the EXT3 file system. After my NMT died, I moved the hard drive into an external USB enclosure. I was able to get the Xios to read from the drive using the USB OTG (On the Go) Helper; the Xios would not recognize the drive without the app, as apparently the build of ICS it uses cannot natively read from EXT3 devices connected externally (even though it uses an EXT format on its internal drive space). The Xios was able to read from the files deposited by the NMT on the drive fine; I could also see and read the files on my PC using the Samba File Sharing app. So things were looking up, and it looked like I had found a good replacement for my NMT. Then I ran into a problem.
Any file I copy from my PC to the EXT3 USB drive is unreadable. I can copy files to the FAT32 Microsd card without issue, but the files I copy to the HD show as Readable: No and Writable: No on ES File Explorer. Any media player that attempts to play the files fails. I can play media from the SD card fine, and from my PC fine. If I attempt to copy a file from the SD card to the HD using ES, the copy operation fails.
From my limited experience with Unix/Linux, I'd say permission to write a readable file to the HD still belongs to my dead Popcorn NMT. I need a way to have the Xios take ownership either for the files I copy from my PC, or the entire partition. The Xios comes rooted by default. Is there some kind of Android command line app and a script I can use to do this, or some kind of an ownership app I can use to take ownership of the drive?
Thanks!
Ustankragnar said:
I recently purchased a Pivos Xios Android Media Center. I bought it to replace my Popcorn Hour Network Media Tank. I had been using a 1 terabyte drive in the NMT, which the Linux back end of the NMT had formatted to the EXT3 file system. After my NMT died, I moved the hard drive into an external USB enclosure. I was able to get the Xios to read from the drive using the USB OTG (On the Go) Helper; the Xios would not recognize the drive without the app, as apparently the build of ICS it uses cannot natively read from EXT3 devices connected externally (even though it uses an EXT format on its internal drive space). The Xios was able to read from the files deposited by the NMT on the drive fine; I could also see and read the files on my PC using the Samba File Sharing app. So things were looking up, and it looked like I had found a good replacement for my NMT. Then I ran into a problem.
Any file I copy from my PC to the EXT3 USB drive is unreadable. I can copy files to the FAT32 Microsd card without issue, but the files I copy to the HD show as Readable: No and Writable: No on ES File Explorer. Any media player that attempts to play the files fails. I can play media from the SD card fine, and from my PC fine. If I attempt to copy a file from the SD card to the HD using ES, the copy operation fails.
From my limited experience with Unix/Linux, I'd say permission to write a readable file to the HD still belongs to my dead Popcorn NMT. I need a way to have the Xios take ownership either for the files I copy from my PC, or the entire partition. The Xios comes rooted by default. Is there some kind of Android command line app and a script I can use to do this, or some kind of an ownership app I can use to take ownership of the drive?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Update: I'm able to use Root Explorer to change the permissions on files deposited onto to the drive by PC over Samba. I have to change permissions on both the created folder and the file to do this. This is a tedious process using Root Explorer. Would I be able to use Remote ADB to change the permissions on the ext3 drive from my PC in bulk, or does it always have to be done at the file/folder level. I'd preferably just like to transfer ownership of the ext3 partition to the Xios.

[Q] Correct format/partition layout for usb to auto mount?

I've got a 3TB external drive drive hooked up to my Ouya running CM11 (Android 4.4)
I run Nzbget and Transmission in optware, and use CM primarily as a vehicle for XBMC so I need the space.
I had it in 2 ext4 partitions which needed a init script to mount under the stock OS.
I was hopping to get it working in a less hacky manner under CM.
I tried with the two parts, and no go so i redid it with one big partition with root as the UID and sdcard_rw as the GID.
Still no dice. I can access it in File Manager with elevated permissions, but no go in XBMC or other apps.
Also tried one big exFAT partioning with no luck.
I plugged in an 8g ntfs drive I had and it automounted it no problem.
Anyone know the right way to configure the drive? We're a Linux household so sticking with ext2/3/4 would be ideal. NTFS I would like to avoid.
Thanks
mounting manually for now
System logged this when it failed to automount
EXT4-fs (sdb1): Unrecognized mount option "context=ubject_r:sdcard_external:s0" or missing value
Anyone shed light on this?

Xiaomi Mi Box 3 (MDZ-16-AB), external storage questions

These are the cheap AndroidTV 6 boxes you can find on eBay, Amazon, Walmart, et al. I'm not concerned with rooting the device, from what I've read that's not possible (at least not if you don't want it permanently tethered to a PC). I am interested in using an external hard drive as external (_NOT_ internal) storage without having to format it FAT32, is that possible?
My issue is, I have a Seagate external hard drive that I would like to use both as a general backup device, and as portable storage for my movie and music collection. My desktop PC runs Ubuntu Linux and I do have files I would like to backup that require (or at least would benefit from) a filesystem that is case-sensitive and preserves Linux permissions. I've tried formatting the drive as ext2, 3 and 4 on my desktop PC and AndroidTV recognizes it, but will not mount it, I only have the options to prepare the drive as "Internal" or "External" storage. If I prepare it as internal storage, I find that it's formatted as FAT32 with a similar directory structure as the SD card in my Android phone. If I prepare it as external storage, I find that there is a single partition that my desktop sees as "unknown" (I'm assuming it's an encrypted ext2, 3 or 4 fs). Partitioning doesn't help, I've tried splitting the drive evenly between FAT32 and ext4 partitions and my AndroidTV box can see and mount the FAT32 partition but cannot safely unmount it (I'm assuming because of the second partition that it can't do anything with).
Is there anything I can do, without rooting the device, to get it to recognize ext2, 3 or 4 (or literally _any_ other Linux compatible, case-sensitive filesystem) as external storage?
I suggest use plex server on Ubuntu and let the hdd always connected to Ubuntu. Access media content from plex app on mi box

			
				
I suggest to check out Emby
It is an open source media server which worth a try.
Mi Box different models. consfused please help!!
The Mi Box reviews are available all over the internet.
But it is becoming very difficult for a noob like me to understand what features are there in each model.
I have been looking at MDZ-16AB, 3C, 3S etc. it is very confusing to understand which is predecessor of whom.
One comparison that i see here but is has completely different naming convention to understand
hxxp://attach.en.miui.com/forum/201412/03/225910cbuzbykhqtaqx7a7.png.thumb.jpg
Then there is one Mi Box which is avialable with SD card option, OTG option, which version is this?
hxxp://bdbazaar24.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/181046tub3kg5xvt8v28vv.jpg
Can someone please tell which version is the best? I plan to use it overseas and buy it in US.
Any other box that I should consider (I wish to have Google Cast functionality in that box)
Please help.

Categories

Resources