Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
Yeah the whole "mounted drive" thing and the way it is handled on Android/Linux drives me crazy since I got my DroidX.
If I plug an SD card into my Windows PC there is no contention. I can read/write it from the computer it is on or from a networked computer etc.
Not the case with the phone sd card. 
Guess Android/Linux just doesn't like to share.  |
When Linux (but actually Windows works this way too) "mounts" a drive, it has an "exclusive" hold on the device's storage, that's why you need to "unmount" the SD card and "mount" it to Windows. Yes, when you choose "USB Mass Storage" you are actually unmounting it from Android and mounting it in Windows, so that windows has exclusive hold on your phone's MicroSD card. In fact, you can't access your SD card from Android while "USB Mass Storage" is active.
To follow your example, when you plug an SD card into your Windows PC, only your windows PC has direct access to it.
If you have a wireless network at home, you can get rid of the problem by installing SwiFTP from the Android Market, and using an FTP client on your PC: this makes the transfer of files to and from your Droid X as easy as dragging and dropping files, without the need to unmount anything (because by using FTP it's still your Droid X who has exclusive hold of its MicroSD, and your PC communicates with the Droid X, not the SD card).