Connecting external HDD to Android phone

[voiha]

Hello, basically I need to connect external HDD to android phone (or smartphone in general) but from what I'm reading is that not every external HDD may work as the smartphone can only provide 0.5A and if that's not enough juice for the drive then it just won't work. 

My questions are:
1: Is it as easy to connect them as plug and use ?
2: What external HDD's I should look for ?
3: also should I have to worry about something else i don't get ?

Thanks in advance !

[OSBK]

9 minutes ago, voiha said:

Hello, basically I need to connect external HDD to android phone (or smartphone in general) but from what I'm reading is that not every external HDD may work as the smartphone can only provide 0.5A and if that's not enough juice for the drive then it just won't work. 

My questions are:
1: Is it as easy to connect them as plug and use ?
2: What external HDD's I should look for ?

Thanks in advance !

You'll be looking at 2.5inch drives, and yes it will be plug and play just like a normal computer but the main issue will be your phone!
It has to supply enough power, you gotta patch it to support NTFS file system and that requires ROOT access (not sure if a non-root method exists), and just as a little note! some brands disable OTG completely on their phones so even a usb pen drive might not work. 

[voiha]

2 minutes ago, Salazar said:

You'll be looking at 2.5inch drives, and yes it will be plug and play just like a normal computer but the main issue will be your phone!
It has to supply enough power, you gotta patch it to support NTFS file system and that requires ROOT access (not sure if a non-root method exists), and just as a little note! some brands disable OTG completely on their phones so even a usb pen drive might not work. 

Oh..I see
I'll be testing it on Samsung J5 phone, from what I see the OTG is not locked does that means I won't need to ROOT the phone ?

[OSBK]

4 minutes ago, voiha said:

Oh..I see
I'll be testing it on Samsung J5 phone, from what I see the OTG is not locked does that means I won't need to ROOT the phone ?

If OTG isn't locked then the next issue you'll need to check is how much power you phone can supply (example when you charge another device through OTG) and for this one you'll have to test it I guess.
For ROOT, Android by default doesn't support NTFS file system, probably the one on your hard drive, so depending on if there is a way to access NTFS storage without Root access, you might need to root the device.
Give this a try " https://techpp.com/2015/06/25/how-to-enable-ntfs-support-on-android-with-without-root/ " I just found it so I can't confirm if it works or not as I always root my phones.