Does Android OS have an issue with OTG drives formatted as exFAT?

[consptheory77]

I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 that I play media files that are larger than 4GB. To do this, I had to format the SD card as exFAT. I also use a USB drive with an OTG adapter to play smaller media files that I don't have to transfer over to the SD. I had this drive formatted as NFTS, but it occurred to me yesterday that I might be able to play the +4GB files if I formatted the USB drive as exFAT as well. I did that, and now the tablet will recognize the USB drive, but not that it has any data on it. Is this because the Android system has an issue recognizing USB drives formatted as exFAT, or is it perhaps because I set the allocation size to the maximum allowable when I went to do the exFAT format?

 

[Solandri]

I have the same tablet but don't want to reformat my microSD card just to test. Other people with the Tab S report it can read exFAT just fine.

https://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=64669111&postcount=7

So try changing the allocation size. If you still can't get it to work, post here again and I'll take the time to copy the data off my card and try reformatting it.

 

[consptheory77]

I have the same tablet but don't want to reformat my microSD card just to test. Other people with the Tab S report it can read exFAT just fine.

https://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=64669111&postcount=7

So try changing the allocation size. If you still can't get it to work, post here again and I'll take the time to copy the data off my card and try reformatting it.

I tried the allocation size at "default" as well as "maximum" and in neither case does the tablet recognize the drive as having any space. I format the drive back to NFTS and everything is fine.

 

[consptheory77]

It's not, to be clear, about whether the tablet recognizes exFAT as a formatted SD within the the tablet itself. I already know it does and have it formatted as such. It's about whether it recognizes a USB drive formatted as exFAT connected to it through OTG, and, as far as I can tell, natively, no, it can't do that. There is a workaround, and that this app called Total Commander and then add the app "Paragon ExFAT NTFS USB Android" and you have to pay $5 for it, but what it does is mount your exFAT so you go back to the Total Commander file explorer app and then select your files from there.