View android as drive

How to Map or Mount Android as a Dri­ve on Windows

Ashish Mundhra

12 Mar 2015

I have always hated the idea of using cables to transfer data between my devices. Be it photos or music, wireless file transfer solutions have always captivated me. This has motivated me to find wireless file transfer solutions for Android smartphones, many of which I’ve shared with you in the past.

From wireless file transfers between Androids, file transfers using browsers and app transfers between two Android devices – you name it, we have a tutorial to get that done. Adding to the list, today I am going to show you how to map your Android device as a hard drive on Windows and transfer files wirelessly. I believe that it’s much easier to use CTRL+C/X and CTRL+V when it comes to transferring files than to use third party tools or a web browser.

Mapping Android Storage as a Window’s Drive

To start, download and install the WebDAV server app on your droid. This app can be installed on any device and root access is not necessary for the app to function. Once the app is installed, make sure that the computer and phone are connected to the same Wi-Fi network and hit the red button to start the server. The app will display an IP you can connect to so you can access the storage on your Android.

On the computer, open up Explorer and click Map Network Drive. Here, choose the drive letter. I choose the letter A for Android; the fact that no one uses a floppy drive these days means this should be free on every system. When Windows asks you for the IP, type in the IP that’s displayed in the app using the format \\ :

and then connect.

If a firewall is not an issue, your SD card will be mounted on the computer and you will be able to use it like any other drive on the computer.

Note: The idea of mounting the SD card as a drive occurred to me while I was checking out a new app on the Play Store called AirDrive. The app does the same thing with a single click, but charges a whopping $14 USD per annum. So here’s a troll face to the app developer.

In advanced settings of WebDAV you can choose a password to increase security. The password configuration on Windows should be done while mapping the network drive. Additionally, you can select a subfolder you need to map instead of the entire SD card. This folder can be the one you use the most, like photos or videos.

Cool Tip: For added security, you can change the default port that’s set by the app. The app gives you the option to use your 3G or 4G network to connect. This way you can access the files even when you are not connected to the same Wi-Fi network. However that would dip into the data allowance of your device.

Conclusion

So that was how you can map your Android as a drive on your PC. I am not sure how these things work on a Mac or Linux machine, but if you know how to map a network drive on those platforms, please do share it with our readers in the comments section.

Last updated on 8 Feb, 2018
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.

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Did You Know

The B612 app is named after the B-612 asteroid which appears in ‘The Little Prince’ novella.

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Mount Android as a Disk Drive in Mac OS X for Easy File Storage & Access

Something that many Android phones and tablets are able to do is connect to a computer as if they were an external disk drive. It’s remarkably easy to set up, and all that is required is connecting the Android to a Mac through USB, and it’ll then mount accessible through the desktop and Finder, from which you can treat it like any other storage device to copy files to and from, making it an excellent a replacement to a USB thumb drive. No downloads are required on either the Android or the Mac to accomplish this.

How to Mount an Android as a USB Disk Drive

Depending on the individual device settings, you may need to do this every time you connect or only once:

Attach the Android device to the computer through USB – the device may ask to “Choose a connection type”, and if so choose “Disk Drive”, otherwise continue

Open Settings, then choose “Connect to PC”

Select “Default connection type” and choose “Disk drive”, then choose “Done”

Regardless of the connection type you choose, the device will charge, so choose “Disk drive” and ignore power settings and let Mac OS X (or Windows, for that matter) mount the phone as any other external drive.

A small USB logo will appear in the status bar indicating the device will mount as a disk drive, and at this point the Android should now show up as a connected storage device, just like any other external hard drive or USB thumb drive.

In Mac OS X, you’ll find it on your desktop or in any Finder window sidebar, and in Windows it’ll be in My Computer alongside other mounted devices. Sometimes you’ll actually have two drives show up with a mounted Android device, one for the internal Flash storage (which you should generally not modify as it contains system components), and one for the expansion memory of an SD card. The name of the mounted drive is usually associated with the manufacturer, unless it has been changed to be otherwise.

From here you can copy files to and from the Android and the computer, move video or photos directly through the file system rather than treating the Android like a camera and transferring images that way, whatever you want to do. To keep things tidy and to prevent any files from accidentally being overwritten, it’s best to create a new folder specifically for the files you wish to store on the Android and to avoid modifying the other directories seen on the device.

For people who are accustomed to direct file system access, this is a wonderful feature that is dearly missing from the iPhone, iPod, and iPad, though it’s unlikely to ever arrive to iOS natively.

Notes about using Android as a disk drive

All Android volumes with expandable storage (i.e.: micro SD card expansion) that I’ve come across are mounted as MS-DOS FAT32, and thus will face the FAT32 limitations on things like file sizes, this basically means you won’t be able to copy any single file larger than 4GB (minus 1 byte) to the device. This is not an Android limitation though, it’s a peculiarity inherited from FAT32 file systems, which actually derive from the Windows world.

Not all Android OS devices support this ability, and some devices will require usage of the dedicated Android File Transfer app to move files around. This is particularly true with older devices, those without storage expansion options, and those that have been heavily modified or branched by a device manufacturer or distributor with file access limitations in place.

Ultimately, Android and Macs get along very well, and though there may not be the same ease of precise synchronization that exists between iOS and OS X, it’s still a very usable combination once you take the time to setup syncing Mail, Calendars, and Notes between the two.

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View android as drive

Google Drive API with Android

There are many ways to upload images and files. Also, there are many places from which to uploads files: Dropbox, local storage on the device, Google Drive and other services. In this tutorial, we are going to take a look at how to upload and create a file in Google Drive. To do so we need to Google Drive SDK and Google Authentication Base on Google Drive Rest API we are going to do that.

Okay, it’s enough to talk about it 😎 Let’s get into it,

Start a new Android Studio project from the startup screen or New Project then select Empty Activity’ from the Choose Project` box.

Enter the name drive-rest-sample company domain and a project location. Make sure to Choose Language Java.

And Click Finish .

Registering for Google Drive

As we discuss we need to Google Drive SDK, So in order to use it, we need to enable that API. Okay don’t worry we will move forward step by step

• Go to Google Console.
• Sign up for a developer account if We don’t have or then sign in.
• Create a project Or Select and click continue from below,

• After creating a project we have Dashboard like below,

• Now, Select Library on the left-hand side to go to the Search screen
• Type “Google Drive” and select Google Drive API.
• Select Enable. Then It looks like below,

• Back to Dashboard, from Dashboard left-hand side go to Credentials. Create Credential by selecting the OAuth client ID like below

Tt navigates to the Create OAuth client ID page. Select our Application Type Android .

• Now we need your SHA-1 Signing-certificate fingerprint key. Do so follow below steps
• Copy the keytool text (press the Copy icon) and paste it into a terminal.
• Change the path-to-debug-or-production-keystore to your default debug keystore location:
• On Mac or Linux,

/.android/debug.keystore .

On Windows, %USERPROFILE%/.android/debug.keystore .

After you execute the command, you will be prompted to enter the keystore password. The password for the debug keystore is blank by default, so you can just press Return or Enter.

Notes: If throwing error to generate singing key then it might be keystore not found.

I used an alternative command for my machine MAC OS .

If everything works correctly, you should see something like this:

• Copy the SHA1 value from the terminal into the text field and press Create. The Client ID dialog will appear. Press OK.

• Finally, enter a name and the package name that we used to create our app . Although the hint refers to the package name in AndroidManifest.xml , it has to match the applicationId in build.gradle instead — otherwise, the login flow will fail.
• We don’t need to complete the form that appears, it’s optional so press Save and move on.

Optional, Now, In the Credentials page. Authorization on Android uses the SHA1 fingerprint and package name to identify your app , so you don’t have to download any JSON file or copy any API key or secret to our project.

It about lots man, Don’t worry! Now, are in the fun part 😎 .

Let’s Back to — Android Studio

1.Add those permission in ‘AndroidManifest.xml’ file

2.update build.gradle file

3.create ‘DriveServiceHelper.java’ helper class

The returned list will only contain files visible to this app, i.e. those which were * created by this app. To perform operations on files not created by the app, the project must * request Drive Full Scope in the Google * Developer’s Console and be submitted to Google for verification.

1. Now open up ‘activity_main.xml’ file

👌 Congratulations!. & Thank You! If you have any issues and queries,Feel Free To Comment.

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