The Nexus 7 is an awesome tablet with a few limitations, the biggest of which, is the limited storage space available. I have a 16GB Nexus 7 and its really a pain, because I can’t have many large games on it, or can I? Maybe not normally, but I can definitely expand the storage by attaching a Flash drive to it.
And here’s how:
Things you will need:
- A USB OTG Cable.
- Any USB Flash Drive.
- A rooted Nexus 7. If you haven’t rooted your Nexus 7 yet, you can do so by following our post here.
- Stick Mount – A free app which enables you to mount and unmount the usb storage.
If you don’t want to root your device, you can use the Nexus Media Importer, a paid app to connect your usb storage device to your Nexus 7.
I am going to walk you through the steps on using Stick Mount:
1. First, you need to download and install Stick Mount. Download it from Google Play.
Once you have installed it, plug in the OTG cable to the Micro USB port on your Nexus 7 and the flash drive at the USB end of the cable.
2. You will get a prompt from Stick Mount asking if you would like to open the app and shows an option to do so by default for the connected device.
If you do not get the prompt, gently unplug the OTG cable from the Nexus 7 and re-plug it. Repeat the step in case it doesn’t prompt you on the first few tries.
Stickmount should pop-up saying the device is active.
3. Now you can use your file manager to access the files you have stored on your USB drive. Or use any media player to watch movies or listen to songs directly from the usb drive. Saves a ton of space on the Nexus 7.
The device will be mounted under /sdcard/usbStorage/.
4. You can unmount the device anytime, by pulling down the left hand side of status bar and tapping on Unmount.
If you chose to run Stick mount by default for the device, it will automatically mount the storage the next time you connect it.
I tested this on a USB drive which uses FAT32 file system.
Here is a link to the OTG Cable that I have. I bought it from Ebay and it costed me about $2 (including shipping). I am sure you could find a similar one on Amazon.
Note: Even though it says it is for “Samsung Galaxy S3 i9300 i9220 N 7000 i9100”, it works pefectly well with the Nexus 7’s mini USB port.
