Drive Letter

[Eldkatten]

Hello,

when I connect the Gemini to my (windows) laptop, and chose "connect as media device", there appears a new device "Gemini" under "Computer" in Windows Explorer, but it doesn't have a drive letter, and isn't a network device either. Thus it doesn't appear in other filemanagers like Total Commander.
Though most of you - if using MS Windows - might be alright with Windows Explorer, many of my datatransfer datamanagement solutions depent on a drive letter and a directory structure beneath it. So here is my question: is it possible to assign a drive letter to the Gemini, once connect to a Windows (7 or 10) computer with the USB cable?

Thanks and kind regards

[gidds]

This seems to be a common problem with Android file transfers generally.

I don't use Windows, but it behaves similarly on macOS: it opens up what looks like a Finder window, but isn't.  You can drag files to and from it, but you can't rename files on the Gemini, view or change their properties, open them, or do anything else you can do in Finder windows.  Plus the appearance isn't quite right, the sort order's different, and other discrepancies.  Even worse, from my perspective, the device isn't mounted as a drive so it's not available to other apps, programs, scripts, tools, &c.

(And in the Mac case, it's not very stable: I had frequent freezes and crashes.  Some seemed to be due to unusual but valid characters in filenames; others had no apparent reason.)

I gave up on it entirely, and set up an SSH server on my Gemini instead.  Now I can connect to it from the command line and from scripts I wrote, and you can use higher-level programs like rsync.  Plus you could use a variety of other comms programs that know about SSH (of which there are many).  And the other good thing is that it works over wifi, so I don't need to faff around with cables!

[Eldkatten]

Hello,

thank you for your answer.
I would like to add that devices with earlier Android versions (like 4.2 and 4.4) did appear like an external usb-drive, thus with an assigned drive letter.
Is this an Android issue or one with the Windows drivers?

Kind regards

[Murple2]

Hello,

thank you for your answer.
I would like to add that devices with earlier Android versions (like 4.2 and 4.4) did appear like an external usb-drive, thus with an assigned drive letter.
Is this an Android issue or one with the Windows drivers?

Kind regards

I'm pretty sure it's because android uses MTP rather than emulating a mass storage device like it used to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol

Someone please correct me

[gidds]

I'm pretty sure it's because android uses MTP rather than emulating a mass storage device like it used to

Yes, that's my understanding, too.

AIUI, the problem with a mass storage device is that only one machine can use it at once.  So it could only be made available over USB/wifi/&c if the Gemini unmounted it first — which would probably require closing all your apps and make the device unusable, and maybe need a reboot when done.  Not very convenient!

MTP works around that, but as a result it provides much more limited access, which (I guess) isn't suitable for mounting as a drive on remote machines.  So it needs a special program to list and transfer files.

For me, SSH is a much better solution, as I mainly do syncing and transfers via scripts &c.  And I had already rooted my Gemini and installed Termux, so it's fairly easy to run sshd.  But of course that's not the case for everyone.

[Eldkatten]

Hello and thank you all for the explaination. So I'll have to live with what it is now. And have a closer look at SSH.

Kind regards

[petefoth]

Hello and thank you all for the explaination. So I'll have to live with what it is now. And have a closer look at SSH.

Kind regards

I use (on my Moto E phone - I haven't installed it on my Gemini yet because I'm not using it that much  ) SSHelper which doesn't require your device to be rooted:

SSHelper supports interactive Secure Shell (hereafter SSH) sessions and various kinds of transfers including scp, sftp, and rsync, on all common platforms:

*    On Windows, SSHelper works with WinSCP, PuTTY and similar programs.
*    On Linux, apart from normal SSH shell session activities, SSHelper can be used directly with file browsers for seamless filesystem browsing and transfers by specifying the "sftp:" protocol.
*    On the Mac, SSHelper works with Cyberduck and similar programs.

*

Hope that helps

Pete