How to Configure & Setup a Sandisk Connect Wireless USB Stick in Android

If you have purchased a Sandisk connect Wireless USB device and want to set it up for your Android phone, then you have come to the right place. The Sandisk connect is a WiFi enabled USB stick with an inbuilt battery. Since the device comes with an inbuilt battery, you need not have to worry about damaging it by accidently disconnecting it from a PC or any other device. There is a physical power button that safely turns off the device for you and that’s a good thing. The Sandisk connect USB sticks have been around for many years and is designed to work best with mobile devices. You can access the device either using native apps or use the web UI (which is tricky to use). In this post, I am going to talk about how to configure & setup a Sandisk Connect to work with Android devices.

Configure & Setup a Sandisk Connect for Android

Configuring the Sandisk connect for Android systems is straight forward. The easiest way is to connect using the official Sandisk Connect App from the Play store here. Currently, there are multiple versions of the product and you need to ensure that you have downloaded the correct (Read: Latest) app. Once the App is downloaded and installed, follow the steps below to configure it with your wireless stick.

Source: Sandisk Website

Do ensure that the USB Stick is fully charged!

• Step 1: Connect the USB stick to an AC Power source or fully charge it to use it as a standalone device.
• Step 2: Press the power button to turn it on.
• Step 3: Tap on the option which says “Connect to Drive“.
• Step 4: The previous step creates an Ad-Hoc connection with the device and internet will not be available. See the screenshot of the steps below:

Quick Note: You will not be able to connect more than once device at a time in Ad-Hoc mode. You would need to connect one device at a time when following this method. See the screenshot below as we attempted to connect two Android devices simultaneously. Only one device was able to make the connection successfully.

Once you are able to successfully connect to the device, you can configure the Sandisk Connect USB stick to connect to your home router’s WiFi connection. In the next section, I will talk about how to configure that.

Also Read: How to Connect a Sandisk WiFi USB Stick to a PC using Web App

Also Read: How to Connect a Sandisk WiFi USB Stick to iPhones and iPad’s

How to Configure & Setup a Sandisk Connect USB stick with your WiFi Connection

Once you have completed all the steps mentioned above, you can go to the settings menu options to configure the WiFi Connection settings. Here are the steps below:

• Step 1: Ensure that you connected to the device using the App in Ad-Hoc Mode
• Step 2: Tap on the top right hand menu and then tap on “Settings“
• Step 3: Under settings menu, select the option which says “Select a different Network“
• Step 4: Tap on your WiFi connection name (SSID) and then type in the WiFi password

See the steps explained above in the screenshots below:

Note: The Data transfer speed is considerably slower in WiFi infrastructure mode when compared to the Ad-Hoc method.

Configure & Setup a Sandisk Connect using a Mobile Web Browser

The Sandisk Connect USB stick also comes with a web based mobile user interface. However, we found that connecting to the device using the web browser is tricky. The reason is because we were unable to locate or find the hostname of the device. Both in Ad-Hoc WiFi mode as well as in Infrastructure mode, when we issued commands like “nslookup %ipaddress%” or “nbstat -A  %ipaddress%” but were unable to find any hostname. If you happen to know the default hostname, do drop us a comment below. Anyways, here is our method to connect to the device using a mobile Web browser.

• Step 1: Go to the settings menu and tap on “Set Password to Drive” to setup a password of your choice.
• Step 2: Find out the IP address the device is getting assigned with. In Ad-Hoc WiFi mode, the IP address range is 172.25.63.x and the default gateway is “172.25.63.1“. In infrastructure mode, your USB will get an IP address based on the DHCP lease of your router. Typically home routers are in the range of 192.168.1.x or 192.168.0.x.
• Step 3: Open your mobile web browser and type in http://172.25.63.1/myconnect/ when in Ad-hoc mode. In infrastructure mode, in our case it was http://192.168.1.7/myconnect/
• Step 4: Type the Username as “Owner” and the password that you set in step 1. (Set Password to Drive)

Note: You can find out the IP address from the settings menu, under your WiFi settings.

Here are the screenshots:

When you are using the device as a regular USB drive (For example connected to a Computer USB Port), do note that you will not be able to transfer any files. This is a limitation that we have to live with at the moment. We tried this step and this is what we got. See below:

Overall, we found this device to be versatile and useful. I hope this guide was helpful for all our readers. If you feel that we missed anything, do let us know by dropping a comment below in the comment section. Cheers!