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
    2014-01-07T15:39:07+00:00

    You don't need to use Skydrive or a flash drive - you can just copy the pictures directly from your Surface to your PC. All you need to do is share the PC's folder on the network/Homegroup, and the Surface can see it and access it as readily as any other folder.

    I've copied videos, pictures, documents to/from my Surface in seconds or minutes this way. The longest any transfer took was when I loaded up my Surface with a bunch of movies for my cousin's New Year's party. That took something like half an hour.

    I've always found it inconvenient to have to connect my Android tablets using USB, like oversized flash drives. I have to dig up the right cable or remove it from my usual charging area, and I can't actually use the tablet while the stuff is copying. IMO it's much more convenient to set the Surface doing the copy across the network, and then let the transfer run in the background.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-01-07T15:45:42+00:00

    I think there may be a USB to ethernet adapter for the Surface. Then you'd just have to connect it to your router, or get a crossover cable to connect the Surface directly to your computer.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-01-07T22:11:20+00:00

    Yep - this is what I do all the time.  I can't understand why nobody else finds this super obvious.  I had never even crossed my mind to think about connecting my surface to a PC via USB, I just can't see that this would be helpful in any way what so ever and could you even imagine the security risk of something like this?

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