Hi, I'm currently thinking of selling my netbook and buying a Nexus 7 tablet.

I'll mainly be using it for web browsing and shopping, but what I need to know is if I can connect a USB hard drive to it and transfer photos to the tablet and vice versa?

I also need to know if I can connect a USB DVD drive to it?

Thanks

The USB port on the Nexus does not supply power to external devices so cannot be used with any form of external drive that does not have it's own power supply. But the help system on line does not mention using hard/optical drives at all.

It has to be connected to a computer to transfer files it would seem.

https://support.google.com/nexus/ans..._topic=3415467
Last edited by chrisjr : 05-04-2014 at 21:41

The Nexus is above all a network device. The easiest way to transfer data to it is over your home network, either from a shared drive, a NAS or via cloud storage.

I don't know how many photos you have and there are storage limits but you could use Dropbox to transfer the files backwards and forwards.

You can use some USB hardware like keyboards and dongles with it by attaching an OTG cable but as has already been said - you won't be able to hook anything up to it that requires its own power supply so a DVD drive is probably a no-go.

Why would you need one anyway?

Can't you just transfer the data from the DVDs onto micro SD/TF cards?

Individual cards that store up to 32GB of data are way more portable than a DVD drive and DVDs

You can connect DVD drive (and have it work) to Windows 8 tablets.

No Nexus device natively supports USB Storage, you can buy an app called Nexus Media Importer that will let you read from USB but not write to it.

Samsung devices support USB Storage though.

I started off with a 7" Tablet but ended up with the Nexus 10, the screen is more netbook sized and generally more pleasant to use.

If it is mainly used out and about consider it but otherwise I'd say keep the netbook.

Nexus doesn't have a card slot so you will need to use the OTG method.

For OTG, the easiest thing would be root the device then you can read and write to USB devices.

Not fully up to date but I think there was something in latest kitkat update which effected OTG connections but not for rooted devices, I would check for more details.

Wow - didn't know that

I wouldn't even consider buying a tablet that didn't have one.

No apple devices have card slot either yet millions manage. It all boils down to how you use the tablet. 32GB is quite a lot of storage.

I've never felt the need for an SD card slot. Almost all of my media is streamed either from the internet or my NAS. When I do need to copy files onto it (e.g. for a long flight) I just copy via WiFi (or connect via USB for larger files).

The only reason I still have a Netbook is so I can transfer photos onto my external hard drive - that's the only reason I'm put off getting a tablet.

W8 tablet can do that, even the RT will recognise external USB discs, USB keys and usually have an SD slot. I stream most of material from my homegroup, but it's nice to have this extended connectivity, too.

I've genuinely found that 32gb tends to be a sweet spot. Never had any storage issues on my Nexus 7 (32gig), despite a silly number of applications and a fair few videos.

Similar on my Nokia 1020. 32gig seems be absolutely fine, at least for my usage.

However my iPhone 4S at 16gb has always felt too tight to be properly used; thankfully its just a works phone.