OTG device

[Roobarb]

Has anyone used one of these for data transfer? Apparently it stands for On The Go.

I use my Samsung tablet every day, the battery needs charging every day now and I'm worried that it will go the way of my previous tablet, ie won't charge at all so is rendered useless. I do have an SD card in the tablet for storage but I'd like to copy all of the data from the tablet to an external hard drive in case it does pack up.

I've been looking online at the OTG cable devices, there seem to be very few that would be suitable for my tablet, also I've found previously with other types of cables that despite the model number being listed it doesn't actually fit the device.

Has anyone used one of these? Any tips please?

[Spelk]

Roobarb
Not sure what you want to do. The SD card which you have inserted into your Tablet is an external hard drive. So copy your files on to there and then you can plug the SD card into any other computer or Tablet and read the files and Copy then onto the new machine.
To be extra safe buy an extra SD card and use one as a backup which you update once a week or so and keep it outside of your house in case of house burning down. Use the other for daily use.
If required a SD card can be put into an adaptor which then plugs into a USB socket. Cost a few pounds.
PS
What connection ports does your Tablet have?
How many GB do you need to copy?

[Roobarb]

Thanks for your reply Spelk. It's the size limitations of the SD card that have prompted my thoughts about this. Having said that, I'm now thinking as a result of your comments that I could buy a bigger SD card!

The OTG device seemed to be a quick solution to transfer the files, if I want to transfer them otherwise I'd have to do so via my laptop which is pretty full in itself. The SD adaptor that plugs into a USB socket sounds good, I haven't heard of those. Can you tell me what to search for?

Re the connection ports, as far as I'm aware there's just the one for the charger and the SD card port. Not sure how many GB I need to copy, hadn't got that far yet!

[Spelk]

Hi Roobarb,
What you should look for is "SD card to USB adaptor". Available online from Argos and also that American company who don't pay taxes. Probably at your local Supermarket for twice the price.
Argos selection is limited. The other lot (and probably eBay) have lots of choice going from Basic (Cheap and maybe flimsy) thumb size units for about £3 to USB hubs where a box about as big as a box of Swan matches connects to the USB socket through a short cable. Even the Hubs which contain sockets for USB, Sd, micro SD, HDMI, Ethernet in various varieties cost less than £20.
The USB socket on your computer may be Type A USB or the newer Type C. No problem. There's always an adaptor.
Looking at the Argos site I see USB storage of 256GB of memory is less than £30 and on an SD card under £40.
Note the price will vary according to how fast the read and write times are. Also not all devices can take larger size cards as the file format has to be different on cards over 32GB.
I remember once paying over £100 for an extra 128MB of ram. And in front of me now is a battered but still functional USB stick of 128MB and that was a lot of memory when I bought it.

[Spelk]

I forgot to say your computer probably has a slot for a SD card and it is generally better to plug things together directly rather than through adaptors.
Though the SD slot in the back of my computer is round the back and a bit of a pain to plug into.
You have likely got SD slots in you car and TV set which can be used for playing music or movies from a SD card.

[jc26red]

I agree with Spelk,
I would buy a larger SD card, which is compatible with your laptop. Put the card in the laptop and let it recognise the card and the laptop will allocate a destination letter … example K:
Connect the Samsung tablet to your laptop via the usb charge cable you have for the tablet, the laptop will whirl a bit while it finds the tablet and storage (table SD card) then say it’s found xxx
On your laptop, open the file explorer
Look for the new (Samsung) drive the letter allocated will the the usb number
Mine is F: for my external hard drive
You may need to search a bit for the Sd card, check how many files there are to be transferred and storage size, then just copy and paste to the SD card you have already installed in your laptop.

No need to buy an OTG cable.

I tend to work with an external hard drive all the time which I can just unplug from my pc and plug into my laptop and off I go! If my pc goes down I have external copies.

[andrewalston]

Tablets and the like generally have slots to use "MicroSD" cards. A large proportion of MicroSD cards come with a MicroSD to full-size SD card adapter, to match the slots in laptops. The connections are the same for both sizes, but one is physically smaller than the other.

They come in various speeds, which is only a factor if you are using them to store, say, a rapidly-taken series of photos from a camera. If I use my phone to take pics, it stalls after about the 12th one while it writes to my (slow) SD card.

My local Tesco stocks a reasonable range of brand-named ones, and they are open until late in the evening.

[Roobarb]

Thanks everyone for very useful replies. Spelk, as I was reading your first post I was asking myself why I would need a Sd to USB adaptor as there's an SD slot in my laptop. As you mentioned Andrew, it's a micro SD card in my tablet, I have a full size adaptor. I've previously transferred data that way, usually from old phones etc.

The problem with my laptop is that it's quite full already, in fact I have most of it backed up onto a 1TB external hard drive. The laptop is also quite old and rather slow, I mainly use my tablet in preference. I was hoping to shortcut things but I guess I should just transfer the SD card data to the laptop then to the external hard drive.

Andrew, I get my groceries delivered by said supermarket, having looked at their app I see they have micro SD cards up to 128gb that can be delivered to my door. 

Thank you everyone