Anybody try an internal CF Card reader?

[Toogy]

Thinking about getting an interal card reader that will sit in a 3.5" drive bay on my computer.
There are a ton of them on ebay for cheap, like this one
http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=51082&item=5193662878&rd=1

Anybody try these out? I am a little leary of it screwing up my files somehow.

[Roy B]

Got one a few weeks ago the best £17 ever spent. Try Misco

[Jesper]

The one your link points at is an USB 1.1 card reader, which means it's going to be SLOW.

Find an USB 2.0 Hi-Speed card reader. It will be MUCH faster than an USB 1.1 reader.

[kenyc]

My HP has one built in. It's great. Reads CF, SD, etc. various media...

KAC

[mdr]

You'll probably have to give up one (or two) USB ports on your computer to free up a mainboard socket for the internal drive. If you get one that has also 2 USB ports, then you're on to a winner.

[khenn]

Here is a newer version of the internal and external card reader that I have. Mine is a 6 in 1 reader that is also USB 2.0, but the best speed I can get out of from a Sandisk Ultra II 1 GB card is about .97 MB/s. Other than being slow, I love the fact that you can eject it and take it with you. I had purchased it on ebay along with a USB2/Firewire card that had internal usb connections. So I was able to plug the reader into to card on the inside of the computer case.

http://www.xpcgear.com/flgenieurh722.html

Kris

[MazerRakhm]

I bought one when I upgraded my computer, and it works great. Connects to the internal USB spots on the motherboard, reads every type of flash card as well as having a couple of external plugs for more USB devices.

The only thing that I found strange was that it always assigns a drive letter to each card slot. Not a big deal, since it just gives you an error similar to a floppy w/o a disk if you try to access it with no card inserted.

[dng]

i bought one, its great it even has a usb port so you can connect more devices, and the card reader can pop out so you can take it on the road, and connect to any usb port. I think the make is silver stone

[Citizensmith]

The only thing that I found strange was that it always assigns a drive letter to each card slot. Not a big deal, since it just gives you an error similar to a floppy w/o a disk if you try to access it with no card inserted.

A lot of them do that. Unfortunately it sucks if your computer connects to a number of networked drives and it screws up the mapping. Now the G drive everyone at my work refers to I had to remap to become the L drive. I just need to remember not to refer to it as the L drive or people end up getting confused.

[elbirth]

I have one in my computer I've had for a year or so... 8-in-1 reader that hooks up via USB 2.0 and has a USB port on the front. Not like it matters to me, I have 8 more in the back. But it's always worked great, I've never had problems, and I spent like $14 on it. Great purchase.


A lot of them do that. Unfortunately it sucks if your computer connects to a number of networked drives and it screws up the mapping. Now the G drive everyone at my work refers to I had to remap to become the L drive. I just need to remember not to refer to it as the L drive or people end up getting confused.

You can easily change the drive letter of them, I mapped mine to the last letters of the alphabet, all the way to Z. If you have Windows XP, right-click My Computer, go to Manage. Find Disk Management, and find the drive letters. Just right click them and choose Change drive letter and change it. It'll warn that changing it may cause some programs to not function properly, but nothing's installed there anyway, so no worries.

[lancea]

Yes. XP is clever :). I like the way the remapped drive letters "stick". You can unmount the card reader, or switch off the PC. When you plug it in again it uses the same letters - without trying to grab the lowest letters again. Just as well. I had lots of drives at work that I couldn't remap. When first attached the reader wasn't usable because it grabbed the first free drive-letter, then couldn't use the next letters.

[COKE CAN]

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=51082&item=5195177867&rd=1

This one is neat. You can take it out and take it with you.

[dave_bass5]

i have blown 2 psu's by connecting to the onboard usb connectors. My problem was the pins on the motherboard were not standard so as soon as i switched the pc on the psu went bang. this was with 2 different devices and was a design fault with the motherboard.
just check your pin settings first.

Dave.

[Citizensmith]

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=51082&item=5195177867&rd=1

This one is neat. You can take it out and take it with you.

Yeah, great idea. Pity it lacks xD support as I actually use that format.

[Citizensmith]

You can easily change the drive letter of them, I mapped mine to the last letters of the alphabet, all the way to Z. If you have Windows XP, right-click My Computer, go to Manage. Find Disk Management, and find the drive letters. Just right click them and choose Change drive letter and change it. It'll warn that changing it may cause some programs to not function properly, but nothing's installed there anyway, so no worries.

Now I'm feeling like a retard. I remapped network drives around the flash card drives. The idea of just remapping the flash card drives never occurred to me. Now I have C, D, G, I, J, K, N, P, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z drives. Glad I'm not managing this network. :)

[Jon]

I have one in my computer I've had for a year or so... 8-in-1 reader that hooks up via USB 2.0 and has a USB port on the front. Not like it matters to me, I have 8 more in the back. But it's always worked great, I've never had problems, and I spent like $14 on it. Great purchase.




You can easily change the drive letter of them, I mapped mine to the last letters of the alphabet, all the way to Z. If you have Windows XP, right-click My Computer, go to Manage. Find Disk Management, and find the drive letters. Just right click them and choose Change drive letter and change it. It'll warn that changing it may cause some programs to not function properly, but nothing's installed there anyway, so no worries.

You can even map them to a directory in your existing hard drive under W2K and XP. I mapped mine as subdirectories of an otherwise empty directory called "Media Bay", using subdirectory names "Compact Flash", "SmartMedia", "SD" and "MemoryStick". Easy to keep straight which one to open, and they don't AutoPlay when I insert a new card in them. You can map them strictly as a sub-folder or let them keep a drive letter as well (in which case Auto-Play will function).

[elbirth]

You can even map them to a directory in your existing hard drive under W2K and XP. I mapped mine as subdirectories of an otherwise empty directory called "Media Bay", using subdirectory names "Compact Flash", "SmartMedia", "SD" and "MemoryStick". Easy to keep straight which one to open, and they don't AutoPlay when I insert a new card in them. You can map them strictly as a sub-folder or let them keep a drive letter as well (in which case Auto-Play will function).

That's not a bad idea... though I personally like having the auto play. Requires me to do less clicking to start looking through my images (at least, if I shoot JPEG... if I shoot RAW, the autoplay isn't really a convenience since Windows Explorer can't view them)