How to use an external right with a Chromebook
Chromebooks are built with tidy storage in mind and offer a pittance of local storage — usually only 32GB or 64GB. So, instead of storing a bunch of Word docs and Excel files on a Chromebook, for example, you are meant to use Google Drive or Dropbox. Instead of a large music library stored locally in iTunes, you are meant to use Google Play or Spotify. Same deal with photos — instead of storing photos locally, Google Photos, Flickr or another cloud service.
Chromebooks feature USB ports and SD card slots, however, which let you connect to external storage devices for those times when you need to access a file that you have saved not to the unblemished but an external hard drive, thumb drive or SD card. When you connect an external control or SD card to your Chromebook, however, nothing happens. You won’t see a helpful prompt or a new desktop icon that, A. lets you know the regulations has recognized whatever it is that you connected to it, and B. provides a gleaming way to view its contents.
Using an external storage scheme with a Chromebook takes a little more work on your part. I’ll show you how to view and download files on an external control and which types of files types and file regulations Chrome OS can recognize.
Supported file systems
Chrome OS supports a wide scheme of file systems for external drives. It can read and write to the NTFS file regulations that Windows PCs use, read (but not write to) the HFS+ file regulations that Macs use, and cross-platform FAT16, FAT32 and exFAT file regulations. It also supports the MTP file system used by digital music players and ISO9660 and UDF used by CDs and DVDs.
Supported file types
According to Google, these are the types of files Chrome OS supports:
- Microsoft Workplace files: .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt (read-only), .pptx (read-only).
- Media: .3gp, .avi, .mov, .mp4, .m4v, .m4a, .mp3, .mkv, .ogv, .ogm, .ogg, .oga, .webm, .wav
- Images: .bmp, .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .webp
- Compressed files: .zip, .rar
- Other: .txt, .pdf (read-only)
How to read files
When you connect an external storage scheme to a Chromebook, you’ll need to do a small legwork to access its contents. Click the Launcher button in the lower-left corner of your Chromebook’s present and then click the Files app. If you don’t see it behind, it means you haven’t used it recently and will need to click All Apps and find the Files app behind among all of your Chromebook’s apps.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott
With the Files window opened, in the left panel you should see your external control listed directly below the Downloads folder. Just as you can in Windows Explorer on a PC or Finder on a Mac, you can view the drive’s folders and files here. Just double click a file to open it.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott
How to second files
If you want to move a file from an external control to your Chromebook, you have two options: drag and drop or copy and paste.
The Downloads folder is where all of your Chromebook’s local files are hugged. You can copy a file from the drive to your Chromebook by dragging it from the external control and dropping it on the Downloads folder listed in the left panel. You can select multiple files by clicking the tiny, circular thumbnail to the left of the file name; the thumbnail turns into a blue checkmark icon to exhibit it’s been selected.
The other option is to copy a file by right-clicking and choosing Copy or humorous keyboard shortcut Ctrl-C, opening the Downloads folder, and then pasting by humorous the right-click menu or Ctrl-V.
You can also Decide to cut instead of copy, of course, if you want to move the file instead of just copying it. You can also move in the spinal direction and move files from your Downloads folder to your external control (or Google Drive) to free up drive space on your Chromebook.
Last step: Eject
Like Windows and MacOS, ChromeOS will scold you if you remove a control before ejecting it. To eject a drive, click the small eject button to the right of it in the left panel of the the Files window.
