How do I turn a folder into a USB drive or mass storage device?

Question

I have a Plasma TV with USB input that can play DIVX, etc. However, I would like to use some software to turn a folder in my notebook HD (Windows 7) into a USB Mass Storage device, so that I can connect the TV to the PC using a USB cable so that the TV recognizes the PC folder as a Mass Storage Device.

It seems Mac has something like what I need.

Is this similar to Windows?

Solution

Host-side USB and peripheral-side USB are controlled by different hardware. Your PC has a host-side interface, and so does your TV. Your flash drive, phone, etc. have a peripheral-side interface.

You can never connect host-side to host-side, or peripheral-side to peripheral-side. The hardware doesn't support it. ("USB To Go" changes this but read on.)

I'm not sure of any Windows software that implements a mass storage interface over USB, but there is such software for Linux; Android and WebOS phones run it. But the software won't function unless the hardware USB chipset supports peripheral-side. (I'm not sure how the new "USB To Go" spec affects things but you would need hardware and a driver to support it.) Not sure how installing something like this would work.

You could possibly cobble something together with a rooted Android phone but I am not sure how it would work. There's apps for Android that expose the SD card via Samba over Wifi, and then you could connect the phone to the TV via USB. Have not tried it myself and I don't know if it will work.

Regarding your link above, Firewire is a more sophisticated and CPU-independent protocol than USB. USB (unless new "USB To Go" features are used/implemented) can't operate without a host controller orchestrating things.

Comments

[Matthias W.]

This may be related: superuser.com/questions/215466/make-nas-appear-as-a-usb-driv‌​e/…

[MacGuffin]

The "Mac has something" link is broken, was it supposed to be a link to Apple's Target Disk Mode? That does more than turn a folder into a USB drive, it leaves the entire drive open to access by USB.

[FernandoSBS]

ok but I don't want to use a file, I would like to use a regular folder, so that my downloads are seen by the tv like they were on a pendrive.

[johnshen64]

a folder probably would be hard to present as drive and offhand i do not really know one, although the reverse (mount a drive as folder is possible). as a workaround, you can have an automatic sync from your folder to a virtual drive with a software like deltacopy. this duplicates the storage, though. or you could mount a virtual drive in a folder with disk management and do that way. you would have to experiment a little. i did things like this or something very close a few years back so it is a bit vague now what really worked.

[FernandoSBS]

since it's the software which sets if the device is a peripheral or a host, couldn't it be possible that "this" software sets a usb port linked to the directory/drive I want to work like if it was a peripheral?

[Scott Chamberlain]

@FernandoSBS The software does not set that up, The usb controller does, however some usb controllers allow the OS's driver to decide to put it in peripheral or host mode. But that does not mean all of them do.

[FernandoSBS]

How could I check if mine gives that option?

[Ramhound]

@FernandoSBS - Determine what usb controller it is and do research.

[MacGuffin]

This looks more like a comment than an answer.

[vadipp]

@MacGuffin you are right. Also, it seems that when I was answering this, I didn't know about USB OTG yet. Despite the fact that the earlier answer mentions it. And USB type C ports were not a thing back then. So my "answer" is kinda obsolete. Should I just delete it?

[MacGuffin]

I'm still figuring out how this site works, either way it's up to you to delete it. I don't know if the people running the show want to keep old answers that become incorrect in time out of historic value or not. When debating with a moderator over removing an obviously incorrect answer, and potentially hazardous if the advice was followed, I was told they wanted up and down votes to decide the value of answers. One thing I picked up is answers should be given as answers and comments given as comments. What you posted is more of a comment than answer, that's why I commented.