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.

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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
    2014-01-13T13:58:19+00:00

    I really think it's a case of the standard not supporting a system being both a USB host and client. Personally, I'd rather be able to expand the Surface's storage with USB drives. Since there's other ways to get content on the device, I can live without being able to use it as USB storage.

    And IMO the fact that you can't connect to a computer via USB highlights that fact that even the Surface RT is more of a real computer than any other tablet on the market. You can't hook it up to a computer because it is a computer. After all, you can't connect two PCs via USB. The Surface doesn't follow normal tablet "rules" because it isn't a normal tablet.

    It's a unique device, like the iPad was when it first came out. It uses the basic tablet form factor, and the idea of a app store, but beyond that it's very much its own breed.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-01-13T12:14:22+00:00

    Hi Dominic,  It would be interesting if you can transfer content via PC to USB on the Dell but I have a feeling Microsoft will not allow that on there software.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-01-13T09:44:59+00:00

    Kind of off topic but vaguely connected:

    My wife is taking deliver of a Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet this week.  It looks like a tablet and in many ways behaves like a tablet.  However, it runs full Windows 8.1.  I'm wondering how long it is before she tried to connect it to her PC via USB to transfer content.  Who knows, maybe it will work in that way.

    As an experiment, I'm saying nothing but will just watch how she intuitively starts to use it.

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