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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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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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.
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.
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.
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.
Several people have responded to you already, and you continue ignoring them. This is not something a USB host can do. In order to do what you want, the device would have to be significantly dumbed down. Surface/Windows RT has all kinds of capabilities all other tablets lack. A tradeoff is that just like a full Windows or OS X PC, you can not randomly connect things together through USB. You do however have all sorts of other, usually easier methods of transferring files which no other tablets poses.