Will Samsung power a USB Hard Drive?

Does anyone know?    I can't find the power output of the phone.
Specifically as import to phone and edit on it (photoshop express  /snapseed / vsco) I want to be able to bacck up on the go.    I know the Galaxy S9 will power a USB-C SSD disk but I can get a lot more storage for my money if it will power a hard disk rather than SSD which would be useful for extended trips with lots of pics / video

Thanks.

I've asked Samsung support on Twitter too as they are responsive.  However I am aware they are not technical but hopefully they can route the request internally.

It will do it. If the USB port cannot handle the external drive, the drive will disconnect.

Typical power output from the USB port is 0.5 amps.

I have a lot of trouble getting a regular WD external hard drive (3TB) to stay powered long enough for anything useful on my Galaxy Note 8.

But, if you look at the smaller Samsung external SSDs (currently, there's a 500GB and 1TB version), those work great with an OTG cable. They're quite fast, and no trouble powering them at all.

Thanks - that's useful.
I realised with 4K video and photos, I can consume quite a lot of storage on a 2 week holiday.   HDDs offer more bang for the buck than SSD but looks like I might just have to get an SSD - maybe one of the small samsung SSDs - T5 I think

Yeah, they're not as economical, but at least Black Friday is coming up, and I know here in Canada those are one of the items that are being advertised as being on sale.

I think Sandisk and a few other brands make something comparable, but the Samsung T5s really do have great ratings and mine is a little workhorse! Nothing but pleased, even if a higher cost-per-storage.

Thanks.

I bought a " SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD 500 GB" in the sale for £65.  It's at £100 now but not sure what the real price is normally as prices tend to rise before a sale and again just after to make you think you got a deal.
I like that it is IPX rated, and plastic with rounded edges and hole for to tie it on.   My main use will be backing up data I take on the road before I can get back to my home set up,  so it will be living in a bag mostly.   
I have 256GB SD card in the samsung galaxy and now need to buy a USB card reader / hub so I can use the phone as a controller and copy from my cameras SD card to the disk, along with backing up any phone pics

Just a heads up, (and, sorry if you knew this already) make sure you buy a hub with USB-C "power delivery" (PD). I do exactly what you do when I'm on the road - use my phone with a USB C hub to copy stuff from camera SD card to the portable SSD drive.

BUT, in order to have enough power, my USB C hub requires that a power source be plugged into the USB C hub, and I think many are like that when you use them with a phone (vs say a laptop, which can give the hub more power).

Basically, all it means is that when the hub is plugged into your Galaxy phone's one port, your phone can't be plugged in as normal, so you then just need to plug your regular power cable for the phone into the hub so the power can pass through and continue to power the phone, and all the things on the hub.

And the great thing is, it works whether your phone (the hub, actually) is plugged in to the wall, or a portable battery pack. However you can charge your phone, you can use that same set up just plugging the power into the hub, then the hub into your phone.

sarah11918 wrote:

Just a heads up, (and, sorry if you knew this already) make sure you buy a hub with USB-C "power delivery" (PD). ...
BUT, in order to have enough power, my USB C hub requires that a power source be plugged into the USB C hub, and I think many are like that when you use them with a phone (vs say a laptop, which can give the hub more power).

Basically, all it means is that when the hub is plugged into your Galaxy phone's one port, your phone can't be plugged in as normal, so you then just need to plug your regular power cable for the phone into the hub so the power can pass through and continue to power the phone, and all the things on the hub.

And the great thing is, it works whether your phone (the hub, actually) is plugged in to the wall, or a portable battery pack. However you can charge your phone, you can use that same set up just plugging the power into the hub, then the hub into your phone.

Thanks . - I actually hadn't considered USB-C PD on the hub.   I was hoping the phone would power the SSD and hub as I saw a review on amazon where another samsung user showed pictures of such a set up with no external power and reported success.
However,   you gave me pause for thought.   Even if it does work,  I think power would be a very fine line and any dip would probably give a very high risk of data corruption / loss which is exactly the risk I am trying to reduce,  so thank-you.   I am ordering another USB-C hub with PD.    I have some equipment form Ugreen and have been happy with the quality so ordering one from them.

So this is my current working backup set up:
Top Left to right:
1.  Red USB-C to USB-C cable
2. Sandisk Extreme 500GB SSD
3.  USB-C HUB (NOT used)
4. Phon: Samsung Galaxy S9+ (128GB internal storage + 256GB MIcroSD)
5.  USB-C SD SD card reader (not pictured - can't find it!)
When using the hub with a USB-A to USB-C cable the SSD does not have stable power and will disconnect.   I was intending to by a hub with USB power draw (PD) but couldn't find one I like that will ship in time for my trip.
So,   I cleared out some video (1080p / 4K / gear360) clips on the phone and aim to keep about 70GB free.  My SD cards are 64GB and I will usually save to SSD daily when back at where we are staying.
Alone - the phone will cope with the SSD or SD card reader.   I copy from SD card to phone, Then phone to SSD - I may review and prune / edit a little on the phone first.

Looks good!

Yes, on its own, these SSD drives are fine plugged right into the phone without a hub. Just means a 2-step copying process, like you mentioned, but both copy jobs should happen quite quickly.

I don't remember if this came up in this thread, but the other part of my toolkit is the Android app F-Stop Gallery (paying for the pro key is totally worth the one-time fee). I'll use the app to cull photos, since it's a great gallery/management/organization app. I can zip through and rate the photos on the phone 1 - 5 star, or fave or tag them, and then I can sort by ratings and everything unrated I just delete, and THEN I copy to my backup drive again just the photos I want and delete the backup of the full set. The photos retain this meta data when copied to the backup, so viewing again on an Android device/Chromebook keeps all my organization intact.

(I do like to backup first, just to be safe, but since I take a lot of burst shots of birds/nature etc., I really do discard a LOT of blurry/out-of-shot birds. Don't want my hard drives filling up with empty trees!)

Enjoy your trip!

Thanks - you are full of good advice.
F-Stop does actually look useful.      I like the samsung gallery and google photos although I am conflicted with the latter data mining all the data, faces, locations in my pictures.
The tagging would be super useful.   I'm going to try it out

I also use the Samsung Gallery, and Google Photos, especially on my phone. But F-stop is the only thing I use on my Chromebook, since Chromebooks don't otherwise have any kind of desktop app, so that serves as my main work horse. It's alnice to have an app that works seamlessly on both devices, so I can work on the phone when I have to or want to.

F-Stop has so many customization settings, especially with Pro, that it can seem overwhelming. But, one DELIGHTFUL setting to enable is original-dimension thumbnails, as opposed to default squares. When I'm trying to choose between similar shots, or view a grid of thumbnails to see at what point a flying bird has left the frame, square thumbnails just showing the middle of the photo are useless! Even for other shots, if I took a few similar landscapes with different framings, and I'm quickly choosing one to use, it helps to see, ya know, my conscious framing choices!   So that's the first thing I enable, and otherwise, have fun with all the settings menus! 

Great - thanks. I haven't looked at it yet but bought the Pro version right away. I had £9 accumulated from google rewards, so it's kind of free.

If you haven't used that, you get random questions about places you have been and often how you paid. It is data mining which I am uneasy with but I always have location data on all the time to share with my partner(1) and credit cards mine and sell your data anyway.

Typically I get asked the same question all the time and get paid a few pennies :

"were you at shop A"
- yes
"did you pay by A, credit card, B cash, C Debit card"
B
= . 15p

(1) -(after a commuting accident a coupe of years ago I got knocked out.  Loads of people around in the city and got me to the emergency room but always the worry either I might be in a ditch if something like that happens again.   My partner and I share our location with each other, so you pop up on the map.  That is also useful as we are both less than punctual so you get a rough ETA.   There are 3rd party apps that do it but using google is one less data miner and doesn't drain the battery any more than normal