Why doesn't Note 2(N7100) recognize external hard drive but Honor 6 does?

I have two cell phones Note2 and Honor 6. Both are rooted, and run 4.4.2 Both have a battery of same capacity 3100mAh. I can connect any of two external hard drives WD passport and WD Elements of 1 TB capacity (both are NTFS formatted and do not have provision for external powering on) through OTG cable on Honor 6 and transfer files But when I connect to Note2 through same OTG cable, the external hard drive LED flickers and can't view the contents of either drive. Changing OTG cables, using multiple apps from play store to manage OTG mounting did not change anything I read on some forum that note 2 battery capacity is not enough to power on the external hard drive for normal operations and is just enough to recognize the drive, hence the flickering. This was not substantiated by any technical explanation. Besides, Honor 6 also has the same battery capacity!!! So this explanation doesn't sound logical unless am missing something Would welcome a technical explanation for this please Edit: situation is the same if the external drive is formatted in FAT32 Thanks