How To Connect A USB Flash Drive To Your Android Device

If you own an Android device, it must be playing a great role in your every day life. Android smartphones / devices have become an essential part of the daily routine as they act as a great utility in certain tasks of our life. Gone are the days when Android devices were limited to a few features only. You can use your Android devices in a number of ways now, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a businessman, a student or you belong to some other profession, an Android device is going to help you playing the role of a complete computing device. You don’t always need to carry your laptop with you, most of your basic tasks can be done using the little Android powered gadget inside your pocket. Just in case you’ve already loaded your Android device with a lot of music tracks, videos, documents, a lot of applications and now you’re running low on space to store some more content, you will need some extra memory to save your content.

A USB flash drive can be handy in such case. You can keep your important data in a USB flash disk and keep it in your pocket, you can always connect it with your Android device and access your important files / data on the go. You must be wondering about a USB flash drive with an Android device here. Well, Android devices allow the users to mount a USB flash drive using a USB OTG (on-the-go) cable. OTG makes it pretty easy to establish connection between your USB drive and Android device, and instantly allows the device to mount the USB storage that appears as a separate partition inside your file manager.

It’s pretty easy to connect a USB flash drive to a Samsung, Sony  or HTC device since they run their modified Android firmware, you don’t need to root your device or any other tweak. However, to connect a USB flash drive to a Nexus device or any other device running pure stock Android firmware, you need root access and stick mount installed in order to mount the USB drive. In the following post, we will explain a method to connect USB storage device to your Android device. Let’s go ahead and learn it now.

Requirements:

1. An Android device.
2. A USB OTG Cable
3. A USB Flash Drive or a Pen Drive
4. Stick Mount [Root] [Only for Nexus users or users running stock Android firmware on their device. If you are using a Samsung, HTC or Sony device, skip this step.]
5. File Manager [You can use stock file manager if you have it, or else download and install ES File Explorer]

How To Connect A USB Flash Drive To Your Android Device

1. If you’re using a Nexus device or a device with stock Android firmware, make sure that you’re rooted it and installed Stick Mount on it. If you’re using a Samsung, Sony or HTC device, skip this step.
2. Now connect the USB drive into an OTG.
3. Connect the other end of the OTG into your smartphone’s charger/USB port now.
4. As soon as you connect you OTG to your device, a pop-up will open up, check “Use by default for this device” and tap “ok”. In case you’re using a non-Nexus or non-stock Android device, you won’t get any popup, you will only get a notification in the notification determining the successful connectivity of USB drive with your Android device.
5. One connected, open the file manager. USB drive will appear as a separate folder/partition/drive in the file manager now. Access it by tapping the drive folder.
6. You will find all of your content saved on the USB flash drive.
7. You can now copy or move data between your phone’s storage and the external USB storage.
8. That’s all.