Can Android's internal memory be mapped to a drive letter on PC?

Question

When an Android device is plugged in to a PC (through USB?), is the internal file system mapped to a drive letter on the PC? So that one can copy files to and from the Android u

Answer 1

As of Android 4, the wise ones have removed USB Mass Storage support for accessing the internal phone memory. So you no-longer get direct block-access (or a driver letter in windows). You can usually choose on the phone between MTP, or PTP (Media / Photo Transfer protocols) for whichever your OS supports better.

If your device has removable storage it should still support USBMS (with a drive letter) for that partition. At least Android still supports that, but your Manufacturer or Carrier-ware may still fail you here.

However, when it comes to the phone memory, there was a trade-off made in Honeycomb. Unified storage prevents wasted space (no more separate storage for phone / data, and having one fill up first and having confused frustrated users trying to move apps to SD, etc). The trade-off requires that:

Android can no longer ever yield up the storage for the host PC to molest directly over USB.

Initially for Mac and Linux where support for MTP/PTP has been slower, You can use an FTP app on your phone. But now there is an increasing number of Desktop (PC/Mac/Linux) apps that understand and support the MTP or PTP protocols. You just don't get block access and so you can't get a drive letter without some hackery / third party software.

There have been hacks over the years to make FTP or WebDav or some other protocol work behind a windows drive letter, and something like could still work work for these MTP/PTP protocols, but I have yet to see any such consumer usable software for windows.

If your Linux distro doesn't include MTP support, gMTP seems pretty popular.