Copying Movies From a Hard Drive to Ga;axy Tab 2

O

omar504

Member
Oct 25, 2012
11
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This is my first post so please bear with me..and I'm not tech savvy at all!
I'm thinking of buying a Galaxy Tab 2 and have quite a few movies on an external hard drive.
I have received conflicting info about transferring these to the tab:

hard drive needs to be fat32...but Samsung said 'format didn't matter"
formatting a hard drive to fat32 will change my harddrive from 500gb to 32gb
even if I end up with a fat32 harddrive of 500gb samsung have told me the tab won't be able to read it all as it exceeds he 32gb max

HELP!
 
omar504 said:
This is my first post so please bear with me..and I'm not tech savvy at all!
I'm thinking of buying a Galaxy Tab 2 and have quite a few movies on an external hard drive.
I have received conflicting info about transferring these to the tab:

hard drive needs to be fat32...but Samsung said 'format didn't matter"
formatting a hard drive to fat32 will change my harddrive from 500gb to 32gb
even if I end up with a fat32 harddrive of 500gb samsung have told me the tab won't be able to read it all as it exceeds he 32gb max

HELP!
Click to expand...

This is very confusing to me. Your tablet should be able to see a hard disk formatted as FAT32 or NTFS but be that as it may formatting it to FAT32 will NOT turn a 500GB hard disk into a 32GB hard disk no matter how hard you try.

You may be confusing a hard disk with an SD or microSD card. What would happen to the hard disk if formatted FAT32 is that the size of any individual file would be limited to 4GB.

Maybe I'm missing something.
 
It's not a micro SD card it's an external Seagate 500gb drive. When I googled converting NFTS to Fat32 several said that it formatted it down to 32gb as that is the max in microsoft..as I said I'm not very tech savvy!
Even the Samsung help line gave me conflicting info..one said you have to convert to fat32 another said it didn't matter but that the tab wont read anything over 32gb. If that's the case there is no point having a 500gb external hard drive (in whatever format) if the tab won't read it.
 
omar504 said:
It's not a micro SD card it's an external Seagate 500gb drive. When I googled converting NFTS to Fat32 several said that it formatted it down to 32gb as that is the max in microsoft..as I said I'm not very tech savvy!
Even the Samsung help line gave me conflicting info..one said you have to convert to fat32 another said it didn't matter but that the tab wont read anything over 32gb. If that's the case there is no point having a 500gb external hard drive (in whatever format) if the tab won't read it.
Click to expand...


OK, I may have stated something that would confuse even me. You might in fact get 32GB partitions using FAT32 but you could have multiple partitions and still use the entire 500GB. The fact remains that I don't understand why your tablet would NOT see and NTFS formatted drive. What version of Android do you have? Some of the older versions couldn't. ICS and JB can for certain and you have a current gen tablet so someone (possibly even me) has their story wrong.
 
Thanks for your forebearance!
I don't have a Tablet yes but I'm probably going to buy a Samsung Tab 2 7"
I was told in JB Hi Fi by their computer man that you HAVE to convert NFTS to Fat32 to copy movies to Tab 2 but you're saying thats not correct..which is good to hear.In that case would the tab read the 500gb hard drive..I"ve been told it would not read anything larger than 32gb..how confusing!
 
omar504 said:
Thanks for your forebearance!
I don't have a Tablet yes but I'm probably going to buy a Samsung Tab 2 7"
I was told in JB Hi Fi by their computer man that you HAVE to convert NFTS to Fat32 to copy movies to Tab 2 but you're saying thats not correct..which is good to hear.In that case would the tab read the 500gb hard drive..I"ve been told it would not read anything larger than 32gb..how confusing!
Click to expand...

OK, we're getting closer. The tablet's internal drive will be FAT32 which would limit the file size on the internal memory to 4GB. BUT the SD card can store the movies and other large files and your tablet WILL read an NTFS formatted hard disk or SD card. The real problem would only be if you tried to copy a file larger than 4GB to the internal memory.

Hope this is getting clearer.
 
Many Thanks!
Now I think I have it:
I can leave my external 500gb NFTS hard drive as is.
To transfer to an SD on the Tab I can simply copy from Hard drive the SD card
That's right?....I've had a lot of conflicting info from JB Hi,Harvey Norman and Samsung so thanks again.
 
omar504 said:
Many Thanks!
Now I think I have it:
I can leave my external 500gb NFTS hard drive as is.
To transfer to an SD on the Tab I can simply copy from Hard drive the SD card
That's right?....I've had a lot of conflicting info from JB Hi,Harvey Norman and Samsung so thanks again.
Click to expand...

Now you have it!!!!
 
Alas that's not the case!
I was in JB Hi Fi today and spoke at leangth with A rep from Samsung who was demonstrating the tab and note. At first he said NTFS is fine,consulted a colleague who agreed. They took an external hard drive plugged it in to the note using the Samsung adapter...nothing. After a lot of head scratching they looked at the box the adapter came in which said will only take Fat32 format. So I DO have to re format my external hard drive to Fat32..they were both surprised but appreciative of my enquiry as they also learnt something new.
 
It's now even stranger...after converting my external harddrive to Fat 32 I went back to JB hi fi where the Samsung man was very helpful. We plugged in my 500gb harddrive using the Samsung adapter..nothing. It wouldn't fire up. His colleague reasoned that the Samsung does not have enough power t fire up the external drive. The Samsung man was embarrassed and disappointed and also mentioned that somene had brought in an Optus USB for internet but it wouldn't fire that up either. Of course I could transfer to the micro cardsand was assured that would work but it'sbecoming harder to opt for the Samsung! The bloke suggested an Asus with keyboard but no 3g with the higher resolution screen and its around 1.2 kgs!...back to drawing board!
 
Interesting. Wondering if it would work if the charger was also plugged in.
 
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