[Qblunt]

Ok,

I tried to search the forum and the internet and can't find any clear answer to my question. I download tons of TV shows and movies on my phone to my internal 64 gig SD card.I know I read that the Priv supports the ability to connect to a usb thumb drive. I saw a youtube video of someone doing it on an Android phone moving files from the phone to an ext USB drive, but they were pictures vs mp4/mkv files, but that shouldnt matter. I downloaded ES File explorer as that is the one that I read supports reading usb thumb drives. Ok, so my question is am I able to copy/move the files that I downloaded to my internal SD card to the externally connected USB thumb drive? I keep getting an error that the task isn't allowed. Now, I can read files from the thumb drive like videos and play them on the phone and I am also able to copy a video from my USB thumb drive to the phone, but not vice versa?

Does android block us from copying stuff off of the phone to an external USB drive? Am I doing something wrong, or do I need another app? has anyone tried moving a file from the phone to a USB drive? Any tips to get this crap to work. My work around is to remove my phone case and pop out the microsd card with a paper clip and stick it into my PC to transfer it, which is a pita. Please tell me there is an easier way!

Edit:
I forgot to mention my usb thumb drive is formatted as NTFS. Does that matter? I am able to see the thumb drive from the phone, play files from the phone, and copy off the thumb drive.

EDIT 2.

Issue solved. NTFS was the issue. I used a thumbdrive that was formatted as fat32 and I was able to copy to it.

[John Crist]

As an aside, your Priv will accept FAT32 and ExFAT (as will most other modern Android devices). ExFAT offers performance improvements against FAT32 as well as lifted filesize limits (16 exabytes from 4 gigabytes) that made NTFS initially attractive against FAT32. ExFAT is also recognized by other devices in case you want to transfer files to anything even remotely modern.

[Qblunt]

Yea, I dont like the fat32 since I download some movies that are over 4 gig in size and I can't save it to the phone. I actually got the Priv to see my thumb drive that was formatted to the exfat file system. I had to purchase the file system app called Solid Explorer and Solid Explorer USB OTG plug in. No free file manager app was able to see my exfat formatted thumb drive. Not ES file explorer, File Commander or Total commander. Not sure why they couldn't see exfat? It was $3 well spent.

[John Crist]

That's super weird. Your Priv should have downloaded the exFAT driver the second it saw the OTG thumb drive plugged in with exFAT.

[Tenkawa]

I did it for free with this method (with exfat formatted)

Total Commander
Paragon_UMS for Total Commander

Both are free and allow me to mount it.
X-plore is supposed to support it but apparently is really hit and miss.
NTFS there are limited options with a non-rooted android.