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I want to be able to interact with the SD card in Android device when it's connected to a computer as a disk drive. Is this possible? Most pages I've seen so far suggest it's not.

Brian Willis
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Kurru
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    define interact. I'm sorry i dont see how this is a programming question – Reno Feb 07 '11 at 02:25
  • @Reno, i agree this should probably be in android.stackexchange.com – Will Tate Feb 07 '11 at 02:37
  • Sorry, I meant interact as in programmically creating directories, files etc. Which is a programming question – Kurru Feb 07 '11 at 02:43
  • Why do you want to do that?? May be, we can suggest another way. – Stephan Branczyk Feb 07 '11 at 02:43
  • @Stephan Branczyk : I wanted a quick and easy way of getting crash data from my device when running my programs on my device. But since can't access the SD card while disk is shared with PC, I was having this difficulty – Kurru Feb 07 '11 at 02:47
  • @Kurru [How about this](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3664630/my-app-just-crashed-how-can-i-get-the-crash-log) – Reno Feb 07 '11 at 03:09
  • @Reno While similar, that question has a different reason. I've got a workable solution now in anycase – Kurru Feb 07 '11 at 03:14

3 Answers3

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No, the SD card can only be mounted by either the phone or the computer, not both at the same time.

Will Tate
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    weird thing : galaxy nexus can somehow have both the computer and the device itself use the sdcard at the same time . very cool , but not sure how could it be , and if apps can use this feature without any problem. – android developer Jun 19 '12 at 08:17
  • I may have to look into that. Perhaps they built in their own arbitration scheme? – Will Tate Jun 19 '12 at 13:18
  • yes , the first think i've noticed there is that there is no option to mount . instead , they have the type of mounting or something similar . i still don't get what it means and how could it be so different from previous versions . wonder if it's like this on the new android 4 devices (like SGS3 and one X) . – android developer Jun 19 '12 at 20:58
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Cool. That's just what I thought.

Some developers have created debugging tools that can work standalone on a device. For instance, there is aLogcat (downloadable from the Market). aLogcat is one that I use a lot. There is also Log Collector, CatLog, and Log2Sd.

But in your case, you'll want to get TraceViewer (which is also downloadable from the Market). Now I don't know if that tool is any good, but it should do what you want, and with time, it may improve (just like aLogcat improved over time).

Stephan Branczyk
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When I plug my Droid into the USB port of my laptop a USB icon appears on the status bar(at the top). From there, I slide the status bar down to see the notification area. There is an option that says USB connected. I select it and a screen comes up that says mount USB. Then on the laptop when I go to My Computer there is a new drive listed in the file manager. I am able to 'interact' with it the same as any other hard drive(i.e. copy, move, delete,...).I cannot use it from the phone again until I unmount it. I don't know if this applies to your phone model or even answers your question.

Joe
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  • Yes this is an option on my phone (HTC Desire), however I wanted it on Mass storage all the time so that I could instantly access the error files as they were being created – Kurru Feb 07 '11 at 02:49
  • Have you considered using an FTP server app over a wireless network? – Joe Feb 07 '11 at 02:51
  • I've started using the HTML upload section at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/601503/how-do-i-obtain-crash-data-from-my-android-application/755151#755151 – Kurru Feb 07 '11 at 02:58