Your old USB flash drive has many uses on a computer, but on an Android phone, not so much, even though your phone can technically recognize, read, and write to it. The obvious limitation is the USB-A interface, so you can’t connect it directly to a phone.
So, when I needed a way to expand storage on my Android phone while on holiday, I grabbed a $5 OTG adapter and used my old flash drives to move files and even record videos directly to them, giving them a second life.
A $5 adapter is all you need to connect
A USB OTG adapter bridges the gap between your old drives and your phone
An OTG (On-The-Go) adapter is a small dongle with a USB-C plug on one end and a full-size USB-A port on the other. You plug the adapter into your phone’s charging port, stick your flash drive into the other end, and that’s it. Your phone recognizes the drive automatically.
I picked up a two-pack of generic USB-C to USB-A OTG adapters for under $8 on Amazon. One lives in my travel bag, the other in my desk drawer. They’re tiny, roughly the size of a thumb cap, so losing one isn’t a big deal when they cost this little.
Most Android phones made in the last five or six years support OTG out of the box. If you’re unsure, plug the adapter in. If your phone shows a notification saying “USB storage added” or something similar, you’re good. Tap it, and your file manager opens with the drive’s contents ready to browse, just like any other folder on your phone.
If you’d rather skip the adapter entirely, dual-drive flash drives with both USB-A and USB-C connectors built in are an option too. New-gen drives are certainly better as they are faster, but expensive at the same time. But the whole point of this setup is reusing the drives you already own, and a $5 adapter makes that possible without buying new hardware.
Your phone treats the drive like native storage
Move files, free up space, and even record video straight to the drive
Once the drive shows up, your phone’s file manager treats it the same way it treats internal storage. You can tap-and-hold to select photos, videos, or documents, tap Move, navigate to a folder on the USB drive, and tap Move here. The same process works in reverse if you want to pull files off the drive and onto your phone.
Carrying an OTG adapter with me on my recent trip turned out to be more useful than I expected. I was paying more than I needed to for phone storage and constantly juggling what to keep. Instead of deleting photos to free up space or waiting for slow hotel Wi-Fi to upload everything to the cloud, I just moved the day’s photos and videos onto my flash drive each evening. Quick, offline, and done.
Galaxy phones can record video directly to the drive
What’s more, if you have a Samsung Galaxy phone running One UI 7.0 or later, the Camera app can write video straight to an external drive as you shoot. The footage goes directly to the USB drive as you record.
To enable it, open the Camera app, go to Settings, then look for the Save videos to external storage toggle. On One UI 8.0 and earlier, you’ll find it inside Camera Assistant (a separate module you can download from the Galaxy Store). On One UI 8.5 and above, Samsung moved this option directly into the Camera’s Video settings. Once the drive is plugged in and the feature is enabled, a USB-C indicator with remaining recording time appears in the top-right corner of the viewfinder. Your recordings land in My Files > USB storage > DCIM.
For anyone shooting 4K or 8K video on a Galaxy phone, this is a big deal. A few minutes of 8K footage can eat several gigabytes. Being able to offload that directly to an external drive while shooting means you’re not constantly worrying about running out of space mid-recording.
That said, drive speed matters here. My basic flash drive worked, but I noticed the Camera app locked up for several seconds after I stopped recording. It was writing the remaining data to the drive, and until it finished, I couldn’t go home, switch apps, or do anything. A faster portable SSD would handle this much better, but for shorter clips, a regular flash drive gets the job done.
It works better than you’d expect, but still has some quirks
The trade-offs are real, but none of them are dealbreakers at this price
Transfer speeds are the most noticeable compromise. Copying a few hundred megabytes of photos takes a bit longer than it would between two fast internal drives. My old flash drives top out around USB 2.0 speeds, so moving large video files requires some patience. It’s not painfully slow, but it’s noticeably slower than what you’d get from a modern USB 3.0 drive or an SSD.
There are a few other quirks worth knowing. Some older phones struggle with power draw when a USB drive is connected, especially during sustained use like video recording. The adapter itself adds a small amount of physical bulk, and your drive sticks out sideways from the phone, which isn’t ideal if you’re trying to hold the phone steady while filming. It’s a minor annoyance, but still a problem.
Additionally, the drive must be formatted as exFAT to move large files. FAT32 works too, but it caps individual files at 4GB, which can break or split longer high-resolution recordings. Formatting the drive on the phone itself defaults to FAT32, so I’d recommend formatting it on a PC as exFAT first. And always eject the drive safely before pulling it out. If the drive disconnects mid-recording, the footage is lost entirely and not recoverable.
Adding more storage to my phone for $5
Your regular USB flash drive won’t match the speed or convenience of a high-end portable SSD. But if you have old USB drives collecting dust and a phone that’s always running low on space, a cheap OTG adapter is the kind of simple fix that makes you wonder why you didn’t try it sooner.