Multi-Card Reader & Windows

[Npl]

Just got myself a nice xx-Format Card Reader, but how Windows handles it annoys me to say the least.
* It has 4 physical slots, each of them shows as "Harddrive" in Windows, wether empty or not.
* The assigned Letters appearently conflicted with those of my DVD-Drives and randomly reassigned them. I had the DVD-Rom as I and Burner as J, now its Burner as E, DVD as G. Whats worse, it seems to reorder them each reboot
* Displays the "safely remove media" - icon in the status-bar, wether populated or not.
* If you dare to "safely remove" a Card by using the status-bar icon, ALL drives from the Card-Reader are gone. Need to use it again? Reboot! Fool!

What Id want is similar and intuitive: unmount card ("safely remove") -> no empty drives displayed
insert card -> display it together with "safely remove media" - icon (ala USB-Sticks)

For now Ive just found out how to selectively deactivate some card-slots (as Im only using Memsticks ). Anyone got clues?

Interesting note: Ubuntu gets it right.

 

[Albuquerque]

It's based on the way the reader is attached to the machine.

If you were to use a PCI-connected card multi-card reader, then it would read the way you expect. But I wager a dollar that you're using a USB-connected one, which means Windows treats each slot as a seperate removable-media drives and not a removable device. Think of it like your CDROM: if you remove the CD, you still have a drive letter for the device itself. If you remove the entire device, then it's gone until you reboot (or faster: device manager, rescan devices)

My Dell has a PCI-based multi-card reader and it works the way you're wanting it to; I also have a cardbus-based multi card reader that also performs the same way you want. In order for it to work the way you truly want in Windows, you need a reader that's attached directly to the PCI bus rather than a USB port.

 

[Npl]

Thanks for the explaination, I figured it would work behind the scenes someway like this.
Still I`d love an Option to say, go to the Device-Manager and "replug" the Reader (its already marked as pending for removal), or to selectively disable the "remove drive"-Icon for drives.

 

[Rolf N]

A workaround for the reboot problem is to unplug the multicard reader, plug it back in and it should resume functioning. If it's an external USB thingy that should be easy enough to do.

I have my external USB reader just lying around somewhere and only bother to plug it in for the few brief moments I actually want to use it. But it sure is totally boneheaded behaviour. I also have one of those floppy drives with an integrated card reader that is internally connected to a USB header. As you might imagine it's totally impractical to use this thing under Windows (that's why I got the external thing-a-gum).

 

[Npl]

A workaround for the reboot problem is to unplug the multicard reader, plug it back in and it should resume functioning. If it's an external USB thingy that should be easy enough to do.

I have my external USB reader just lying around somewhere and only bother to plug it in for the few brief moments I actually want to use it. But it sure is totally boneheaded behaviour. I also have one of those floppy drives with an integrated card reader that is internally connected to a USB header. As you might imagine it's totally impractical to use this thing under Windows (that's why I got the external thing-a-gum).

I got that one and saw a cheap external one few hours later in a supermarket.
Im really thinking of ripping it out again for harrasing me like that, but its actually Windows fault. I wonder how it behaves if your Windows-HDD is connected to a hotswap-sata Controller - "Safely remove drive C:" ?

 

[Albuquerque]

I'm curious if this same problem in XP also manifests itself in Vista... Time to go boot up the RTM and see...

 

[Colourless]

You could always disable write caching and remove the need to use the 'Safely Remove Hardware' dialog. Get properties on the card reader in the device manager, and on the policy tab just change the setting to Optimize for Quick Removal.

 

[Albuquerque]

You could always disable write caching and remove the need to use the 'Safely Remove Hardware' dialog. Get properties on the card reader in the device manager, and on the policy tab just change the setting to Optimize for Quick Removal.

Definitely a viable option to be sure; would save you from having to "eject" the media. Still wouldn't solve the four extra drive letters issue though