How to mount cell phone external SD Card as a drive letter on Android 4.4 KitKat

[c627627]

Can anyone explain why it is impossible to bypass that Android Kitkat security limitation?

Even rooted KitKat devices require different ways of synchronizing External SD card content - all of which - appear to be 10 times or more slower than simply synchronizing content the way we were always able to do on earlier Android versions when there were ways to force mounting external SD cards as drive letters and synchronizing PC and phone content directly.

I understand there are other ways to do this but they are slower, excruciatingly slower to synchronize cell phone external SD card content.


EDIT: I don't know why this is not posted on all other forums, but

Rooted CyanogenMod has UMS access even on Kitkat... I don't know why people don't post this in many threads out there about this but:

CyanogenMod 11 Settings > Storage > [three dots in upper right corner] Menu > USB computer connection > CHECK: Mass storage (UMS)



UMS is not dead on KitKat if you have a rooted phone with after market OS.

 

[Mpegger]

YMMV, but what I use:
NextApp SDFix - To make the SD card writable.
FolderMount (requires root)- Free allows up to 3 folders as a symbolic link or whatever its called in Linux. This way I can make my Music folder appear as if its on the internal drive of the phone.
Samba Filesharing for Android - Allows you to share the main SDcard mount (the internal one) via Samba, which can be accessed in Windows and even mounted as a drive.

Also, with my phone I had to disable all power saving features when plugged in and prevent the screen from sleeping when using the Samba server (it has a option built in to do just that). When the screen would go off, my phone would shut off the wifi even with data being transferred, so you'll have to play around abit to see if you need to do the same on your device too. Although it's a round about way, it works well for me. The first 2 apps you really only need to use once to setup everything initially. Then the Samba server app you use when you want to access your device folders from your PC. For me, that's only when I update my music folder.

 

[c627627]

Thank you. Just to make things clearer: The goal is to make the phone's external SD card appear as a drive letter on PC.


Your first link simply makes SD cards writable, not mountable as drive letter.
I think the second link also addresses the problem of writability, not drive letter mounting.

I am testing that app in your third link right now.

 

[Mpegger]

All 3 apps are what I used, basically in that order. There is no single app solution currently that I know of.

 

[c627627]

Yes. Isn't it strange that the reason there are no apps is that this can only be done on Rooted devices after which no apps are required even for Rooted aftermarket Android 4.4.
This fact is never mentioned in any of the numerous threads out there for some reason.

So we know the limitation applies to retail non-rooted devices but on rooted devices, with (for example) CyanogenMod installed, you simply:

CyanogenMod 11 Settings > Storage > [three dots in upper right corner] Menu > USB computer connection > CHECK: Mass storage (UMS)

 

[Mpegger]

CyanogenMod is its own independent version of Android, so what's done on the official Google version of Android doesn't have to also be on Cyonogen. Hence why Cyanogen doesn't have that problem because they can ( and have) included a simple way around Google's security measures.