Can I connect Surface RT and PC with USB cable?

Anonymous
2012-11-30T00:08:13+00:00

I have a Toshiba Thrive running Android. I can connect it to my PC with a USB cable and access files on my Thrive on the PC. The PC treats the Thrive as a hard drive. Can I connect my Surface in the same way? I have tried and the PC does not appear to see the Surface.

This is a pain, one of the reasons I bought the Surface was to be able to do this type of hard connection and not have to use "iTunes" or the Cloud.

Surface | Other

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Anonymous
2013-03-05T02:57:40+00:00

Greetings SaeedR_706,

That is a good question, however I would suggest rather then using the USB cable, to transfer files over your WiFi network to a shared folder on your Windows 7 Laptop.

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Anonymous
2012-12-05T00:46:39+00:00

Hello Rrccw,

No, you cannot connect the Surface to the PC via USB. However, you can setup Shared folderson your PC. Once you have that, have the Surface connect to the same network via WiFi and then go into Network from the Desktop app, select your PC and then see the Shared Folders. From there, the Surface should have Read/Write access if you gave the permissions on the PC.

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-01-07T22:55:59+00:00

    Just curious - what "super obvious" security risk could acting as a USB client add on a device that can already act as host to a USB drive?

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-01-07T22:48:50+00:00

    Read my lips. USB is 50% - 300% faster than wireless.

    I have 13.9GB of photos from a recent holiday (over 1400 files). Just to satisfy you I have deleted them from the Surface, after spending about 20 minutes uploading them from a thumb drive (after spending the same downloading them to the thumb drive). I am now using wifi to put them back onto the Surface from my NAS. The surface is right next to my wireless N router and the transfer speed is about 5.3 MB/s. The estimated time to complete is about 50 minutes. If the tablet could act as a client to my PC (like all my other tablets) this would take me about 20 minutes. By the way, in the time that I've been taking to type this the estimated time remaining has gone from "About 50 minutes" to "About 50 minutes" - ie it has not moved. Who knows how long it will really take.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-01-07T22:19:28+00:00

    If they marketed it as a desktop replacement for granny I guess people would know what to expect. As it is it is marketed as a tablet, so that's what I expected of it. It certainly cannot perform as a desktop replacement for me and nor (I suspect) for you.

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