External HD back up

joho

Hello clever peeps,

A couple of years ago I bought a Toshiba 2TB external hard drive for backing up photos etc from phones, tablets and laptop, and recently tried to back up photos from my Samsung phone but the HD told me to format it before I could use it.

If I do that surely it'll wipe everything that is on it?

I can't remember when I last had to format something like that - probably a floppy disk in the 90s!

Can anyone advise? 

Then once I've sorted the HD I'll be back for help on how to back up the phone, because that wasn't proving to be an easy job either!

Thank you muchly

Jo

Undervalued

It may be that an external HD has to be formatted in a particularly way to connect directly to a Samsung (Android) phone?? I don't use Android but I am sure somebody will respond who does.

HDs can be formatted in a number of different formats and not all can be read by all devices. However it is possible to partition the disk and then format the different partitions in different ways for different uses. Almost as if you had several smaller HDs in one box. That can be done without losing data but you do need to know what your are doing.

If the data on the HD is important proceed with care!

Whilst any backup is better than none, an external HD only protects you so far. Depending on volume and cost how about using a cloud service?

PRAISETHESUN

My parents had something similar happen when trying to plug an external HDD into a Samsung TV. It corrupted the file structure and they ended up having to go to a data recovery specialist to recover everything. Dad finally listens to me about the importance of maintaining proper 321 backups now...

But yes, if you format the drive it will potentially delete the data irreversibly. A workaround might be to plug both the phone and HDD into a computer and use it as a go-between rather than transferring directly.

Newcad

I think that Android still uses FAT32  format whereas your external drive will currently most likely be NTFS format.

You can convert a drive between formats without losing data, but it is slightly  advanced so not for everybody (although it's easy with the right software).

I would suggest that to backup the phone you forget about using that drive.

USB memory sticks (almost) always come formatted FAT32 from new - so that they can be used straightaway on Windows, Mac, or Android without having to reformat them.

So get a USB stick to backup the phone to, they are not expensive and having a seperate backup drive for each device is a good idea anyway.

PS.Many (most) people backup their Android files to their Google account in the cloud.

Neil_Jones

Newcad said:

I think that Android still uses FAT32  format whereas your external drive will currently be NTFS format.

You can convert a drive between formats without losing data, but it is advanced although fairly easy.

I would suggest that to backup the phone you forget about using that drive.

USB memory sticks almost always come formatted FAT32 from new - so that they can be used straightaway on Windows, Mac, or Android without having to reformat them.

So get a USB stick to backup the phone to, they are not expensive and having a seperate backup drive for each device is a good idea anyway.

PS.Many (most) people backup their Android files to their Google account in the cloud.

Android does not use FAT32, it has never been FAT anything.

FAT is primarily a PC thing.

Android is a variant of Linux so it'll natively be using EXT4.  It did use something before a certain version when they changed it, but that's long gone and out of support now anyway.

To answer the original question the easiest solution is to connect the external drive to a computer, and connect the Android phone to the computer and then copy between the two devices that way.

Although that being said if your Android device is set up correctly it should be backing everything up to your online Google account anyway.

Newcad

On double checking things, Android supports 4 external drive formats:- FAT32, EXT3, EXT4, and exFAT.

https://www.easeus.com/computer-instruction/sd-card-file-system-for-android.html

So as new USB sticks are almost always factory formatted FAT32 they will almost always be compatible with Android devices.

As I said above new USB sticks are specifically formatted to be compatible 'out-of-the-packing' with as many different OS's as is possible.

Edit- remember we are not talking about what format Android uses for internal storage here, the question is about Android's suppored external storage formats.

HillStreetBlues

Neil_Jones said:

Newcad said:

I think that Android still uses FAT32  format whereas your external drive will currently be NTFS format.

You can convert a drive between formats without losing data, but it is advanced although fairly easy.

I would suggest that to backup the phone you forget about using that drive.

USB memory sticks almost always come formatted FAT32 from new - so that they can be used straightaway on Windows, Mac, or Android without having to reformat them.

So get a USB stick to backup the phone to, they are not expensive and having a seperate backup drive for each device is a good idea anyway.

PS.Many (most) people backup their Android files to their Google account in the cloud.

Android does not use FAT32, it has never been FAT anything.

FAT is primarily a PC thing.

Android is a variant of Linux so it'll natively be using EXT4.  It did use something before a certain version when they changed it, but that's long gone and out of support now anyway.

To answer the original question the easiest solution is to connect the external drive to a computer, and connect the Android phone to the computer and then copy between the two devices that way.

Although that being said if your Android device is set up correctly it should be backing everything up to your online Google account anyway.

As this thread is about an external backup I read Newcad's post about Android can use FAT on a external drive, not what Android is based on.

400ixl

Have you checked it is working on a device you know it has been previously? If it does then at least you know the drive is OK. 

You can then look at the best way to back up phone data via one of the other devices.

jshm2

joho said:

Hello clever peeps,

A couple of years ago I bought a Toshiba 2TB external hard drive for backing up photos etc from phones, tablets and laptop, and recently tried to back up photos from my Samsung phone but the HD told me to format it before I could use it.

If I do that surely it'll wipe everything that is on it?

I can't remember when I last had to format something like that - probably a floppy disk in the 90s!

Can anyone advise? 

Then once I've sorted the HD I'll be back for help on how to back up the phone, because that wasn't proving to be an easy job either!

Thank you muchly

Jo

Unplug it and replug it. If if still askd to "format" than it means you've got a dodgy disk. 

PHK

Can you explain what you mean by "The HD told me to format it"? In other words exactly what do you see. 

We need to understand if a) the phone needs the drive in a different format or b) there is a fault with the drive so it's generating an error saying it needs to be formatted. 

Incidentally, you shouldn't need to backup your phone as it happens automatically to the cloud. 

Having a single device backing up phone, tablet and laptop is a single point of failure so if the drive is faulty then you might wish to look at a different backup plan. 

Veteransaver

I'm confused as to how you plugged your phone into a 2tb external hard drive? Did you just use a usbc to usbc cable?
Normally the hard drive would be usb powered so getting the phone to power it might not be the best method, as it would place a large drain on the battery and could potentially cause errors.
Better just to plug the phone and hard drive into a laptop/pc and copy files from phone to hard drive that way.
Or copy to pc hard drive then transfer to external hard drive