Front Panel USB Card Reader

26Feb11

After a year of being in the box, I finally installed a media card reader in my roomate’s PC.  It would have stayed in the box indefinitely if it weren’t for her buying a new digital camera that needed the SD card reader this drive bay provides.

I was initially daunted by the sheer number of wires coming out the back that all needed their special connections on the motherboard, of which I lost the manual to.

I picked this unit up off ebay for $12 and what seemed like a month long wait on the shipping from China.  There’s a plethora of similar internal front panel usb readers available found with the search terms: “front usb panel 5.25″

Installation was surprisingly easy once I figured out that most of the cables were for the firewire and the 5.1 dolby audio cables, both of which weren’t needed with her setup.  Oh, and the fact I had to track down the pdf version of my mother board manual online.

Wiring mainly consisted of plugging in:

• molex power supply connector
• 6 pin keyed usb connector (for usb and memory card reader)
• and screws to secure the sides

I didn’t make use of and ended up bundling in a knot, the:

• 6 color coded firewire cables
• 6 wires for the 5.1 audio
• sata cable

For the above ports on the front panel that weren’t made use of, I used some black tape cut to squares and adhered over the port and the white text.  I was actually pretty happy with the asthetcs of the black tape; the poor man’s adhesive didn’t make it look ugly or cheap.

The end result is that she’s now able to navigate to ‘my computer’ and she’s got 4 or 5 removable drives available.  Because the drive letters are essential mounted and won’t change, I decided to rename the drives to names like “SD, CF, etc”.   I tested her CF, SD and USB thumb drive and all worked well.  (I didn’t go as far as testing transfer rates).

$12 and 30 mins well spent.

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