Best practice for hot-swapping USB drives?

[Guest zombimuncha]

Hi all,

would anybody care to post a set of best practices / procedures for hot-swapping USB drives on VegaComb? (3.2 9n update3)

I have a little USB SD card reader that I use to transfer photos from my Canon camera to the tablet. I have several SD cards (full size, not micro) but none are as big as the microSD in my Vega, so the Vega should be a good place to store the photos, wipe the camera card, then shoot some more.

I'm finding, however, that if I swap the SD cards around too much the Vega stops being able to read them and requires a reboot before it will read any card again.

The procedure I'm currently following is:

- use shuttletools to set USB to peripheral mode

- connect USB card reader with card already inside it

- switch to host mode

- open file manager (ES) and copy files from /mnt/USB/systemusb/ to the internal microSD card

- switch back to peripheral mode

- unplug card reader from USB port

- swap cards in card reader while unplugged

- repeat

It seems if I ever insert the same SD card twice the Vega will not read it, and will complain about "damaged SD card, you may need to format it"

After rebooting the Vega I can again read all SD cards, once each.

So is that a good procedure to follow?

Are the any unnecessary steps in there?

Is there a way I can hotswap any USB drives I want, in any sequence, without rebooting?

Do I need that "Drive Mount" app at all? It doesn't seem to do much beyond moving the card readers mount point from /mnt/USB/systemusb/ to /mnt/sda1/ and back.

thanks!

ZM

[Guest xathras]

You have to "safely remove /eject /unmount" SD cards and USB drives before removing them, just as you would on a PC. Go to Settings->Storage and scroll down. There you will find an option to unmount any mounted devices. Then spend 5 minutes on the "naughty step".

[Guest IanTurner]

doesn't necessarily work, will still complain about the card being removed without being dismounted or so I've found.

[Guest xathras]

doesn't necessarily work, will still complain about the card being removed without being dismounted or so I've found.

So the recommended procedure is????

[Guest zombimuncha]

You have to "safely remove /eject /unmount" SD cards and USB drives before removing them, just as you would on a PC. Go to Settings->Storage and scroll down. There you will find an option to unmount any mounted devices. Then spend 5 minutes on the "naughty step".

thanks Xathras, that option is well hidden! I thought it was suspicious that I didn't see an "unmount" button anywhere. I never thought to look for it in Settings. The word "settings" implies that once you've done your setup it's set up, and you don't need to go back in there.

Anyway further tweakage leads me to believe that the trick is to also exit out of any app that was accessing the USB drive, before unmounting it. It still nags about "an app that was using the card may be unusable until the card is remounted", but this way it lets you remount the card later without rebooting.

So the "Drive Mount" app the come with VegaComb seems to be basically useless, and switching back and forth between peripheral and host mode acheives nothing.

cheers!