Phantom Drives...

In the past I have purchased & thrown away a number of such devices, as installing one has always resulted in 5 or 6 "Phantom" drive letters appearing in "My Computer" (One for every available card slot)

For reasons numerous & un-entertaining, these phantom drives cause all sorts of hell for me, as I am a very technical user that does a lot of connecting and disconnecting of drives, and file recovery scanning and such - and these permanently available & perpetually inaccessible drive letters cause havoc with the various software packages I use.

I have seen similar controllers that have been provided with pre-built ps'c in the past that do NOT create phantom drives, and only create a drive letter once a memory card is inserted.

I wonder which way this device works?

The only problem is that every device I have ever purchased (Separate from a Pre-Built PC) has used Phantoms & I'm really getting sick of throwing money away just to find out it does ....

connecting such "N in 1" card reader necesserally create N drives as you know already. Unless you use several flash cards types, why don't you deactivate the uneeded drives in the hardware properties, so that there's only those you want available and mapped in the explorer ?

blobster21connecting such "N in 1" card reader necesserally create N drives as you know already. Unless you use several flash cards types, why don't you deactivate the uneeded drives in the hardware properties, so that there's only those you want available and mapped in the explorer ?

I agree with that also, every time one connects such a reader the amount of new drives in My Computer will equal the number of sockets on the drive. For example, i used to own a Mitsumi floppy and 6 in 1 reader combo, it had 2 card sockets yet it supported 5 diffrent card formats, but only 2 drives were added to My Computer which corresponded to 2 sockets. I personally didn't have the problems accessing the 2 newly found drives when a card was inserted, i supppose it depends on the manufacturer/firmware, etc. As blobster21 said, simply disable the unneeded drives, that should keep them to minimum.

Well, I did try to explain it very clearly - let me try again.

I have had 3 similar devices - and all of them have created as many "drives" as there are slots on the face to insert cards into, all of which are invalid, as there is no actual media in each slot - causing many and varied complications with a wide array of software.

It's not a matter of DISABLING the drives - as the drives ARE the device - If you disable them - nothing happens when you insert a card rendering the device useless.

I have used drive bay card readers (as I previously explained) from pre-assembled pc's - readers that are not available as separate units retail (and hence I cannot simply buy more of that exact type) , that look & function the same, however do not spawn any Phantom drive letters at all - and only show up as a drive letter (For example : in "My Computer" ) when one inserts a memory card, much as you'd expect when plugging in a flash drive. Similarly - when you remove the SD Card (for example) the drive letter it had been assigned again disappears, leaving no inaccessible drive letters in the list.

These sadly belong in the pc's they shipped with, and I was hoping to add a similar card reader, with the same behavioral traits ( IE : No Phantom Drive letters ) to a pc that did NOT ship with one such card reader.

Reviews of card readers never seem to mention weather or not that particular reader uses Phantom's or not (As we have established that some devices do NOT need to create them)

Sorry KBD, I do also get what you are saying about keeping them to a minimum, however even 1 false drive is too many - as this can cause a number of drive integrity management softwares to report failed drives when there isn't one :\

And crash a bus-scan

so this device behaves pretty much like an ordinary usb key, ie there's no remaining driver letter left once the usb key is ejected. That's interesting indeed

i never had one of these myself, just the regular one....

I sure hope the blue LED on this version 2 is a lot dimmer than the one on the first version. This thing lights my room up at night...

BazookaJoeIn the past I have purchased & thrown away a number of such devices, as installing one has always resulted in 5 or 6 "Phantom" drive letters appearing in "My Computer" (One for every available card slot)

For reasons numerous & un-entertaining, these phantom drives cause all sorts of hell for me, as I am a very technical user that does a lot of connecting and disconnecting of drives, and file recovery scanning and such - and these permanently available & perpetually inaccessible drive letters cause havoc with the various software packages I use.

I have seen similar controllers that have been provided with pre-built ps'c in the past that do NOT create phantom drives, and only create a drive letter once a memory card is inserted.

I wonder which way this device works?

The only problem is that every device I have ever purchased (Separate from a Pre-Built PC) has used Phantoms & I'm really getting sick of throwing money away just to find out it does ....

I have to agree with the Phantom drive issue. I hate it. To get around it, I use an external reader, and unplug it when not in use. Not the most elegant solution, but it works.

Did you ever consider trying to take one of those OEM card readers you are referring to from the PC it came with and putting it in yours? I'm sure you can find somebody with a dead Dell, Gateway, etc. that you take one out of.