Whether you are using your device as a game console, as a multimedia database or simply to take a lot of pictures, most of us will at some point want to connect our device to something else via USB. Here's how to connect a hard drive, USB stick or accessory to an Android tablet and smartphone.

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Check that your device is compatible

To connect a hard disk or USB stick to an Android tablet or device, it must be USB OTG (On The Go) compatible. How do I know if it is compatible? It's simple, just check the manufacturer's website or the box of your device.

And that's not all USB OTG can do. By enabling your device to act as a USB host – that is, to be the boss of other devices that you connect to it – you can use additional hardware such as storage, keyboards or even musical instruments together with your handset.

Connecting a USB device to your smartphone is easy with the right equipment. / © NextPit

If your smartphone is really old, if you no longer have the box or if you are not sure of its model number, you can use Chainfire's app, USB Host Diagnostics, to check. That said, USB OTG is natively present on Android since Honeycomb (3.1) so it is more than likely that your device is already compatible than not.

App version: 1.3

App size: 467 KB

App Compatibility: Android 2.3 or higher

Economic model: Free

A word about power for larger capacity drives

When you connect an external hard drive to your laptop or PC, the drive itself is powered by your computer. The same is true when you connect your storage to your Android phone. However, most smartphones are not capable of pushing out quite as much power as a computer, and this can lead to problems.

Most smartphones can only provide about 0.5A of power. If your external drive requires more than this, it will simply disconnect. Hard drives need a bit more juice when starting up. This is because of the motor inside. If you find that your 1TB drive keeps disconnecting, this is probably your issue.

You might need a USB OTG that allows you to connect a power bank. / © Amazon

You can solve the problem by adding an additional power source. You'll need to get hold of an adapter that will allow you to connect a power bank as well as the connection to your device. Do this, and you should have no problems connecting your external storage to your Android smartphone. Just make sure you connect the power bank and phone first, then the external drive last.

Advantages and disadvantages of USB OTG

You might already be familiar with USB OTG without knowing its name. Anytime you connect a keyboard or mouse to Android you use OTG technology, and it's no more complicated to connect a hard disk to your smartphone than to connect a mouse to it. That said, there are a few conditions to be sure that your external drive will be recognized.

All USB-compatible devices can be used as long as they do not require an external power supply. In addition, your storage device (hard disk or USB stick) must be in FAT32 format. NTFS media will not be recognized. If your disk/key is not in this format, you can of course format it and put it in FAT32 but you will lose any data on it before the reformatting, so be sure to save it somewhere else beforehand.

Your device must be in FAT32 format.

Buy an OTG USB cable

Once you have determined that your device is OTG compatible, you can continue and go to your preferred store and purchase a USB OTG cable. Try to opt for a sufficiently solid connection, there are many cheap offers online but the quality is not always there.

It's also worth noting that Samsung usually ships an OTG cable in the box, so check your smartphone packaging as you might not even need to buy one at all. You can see what we mean in this unboxing video of the Samsung Galaxy S10 range.