20-in-1 3.5" drives

[Will Rickards]

Anybody have any particular recommendations in the 20-in-1 type 3.5" drives? I got rid of my floppy drive and there is this hole there or was until I put my old zip drive in it so I could read all the info off my old disks and transfer it to my backup drive. Now it just sits there to block dust from getting in (good use for a zip drive most of you would say).
Anyway I have another USB 2 header on my motherboard and thought I would get one of these USB reader things. I only have a use for compact flash right now. But the in-laws have SD and I think mum's got XD, the fuji specific stuff?

Just looking for something usefull to fill the spot and maybe increase my picture transfer speed.

 

[LunarMist]

I tried an off-brand (can't remember the name) 3.5" multicard reader this spring. Unfortunately it sucked up around five drive letters and many of the main hard drives were not accessible! Then the Explorer kept crashing. :evil: So be careful if you don't have enough extra drive letters or try to determine if the unused card slots can be disabled.

 

[Mercutio]

I bought a couple InWin internal 10 in 1 readers. They're really funny. If they're plugged into a motherboard with a Via 80237 south bridge, the machine won't boot. Plug them in after the machine boots, and they work fine.
Of course, InWin didn't actually make that model, just sold them. I'm cautious about them now.

Lunar, you know that you can set up hard disks to mount in folders rather than as drive letters, right? If I had to keep track of 20 different drive letters, I'd go insane. If you go in Disk Management and right click on a volume or partition and choose "Change Drive Letter and Path" you can mount a drive in a folder on another drive. That's normally how I keep track of drive past E: or F:

 

[LunarMist]

IIRC that did not work when the drives were plugged into a different FireWire port/controller or on a different FireWire bridge - I forget the problem exactly.