So, a few couple of days backs, I was sitting at home getting bored on an uneventful night. Suddenly, my girlfriend called to remind me to transfer pics off her camera's 1 Gig Memory Stick Pro Duo to a USB drive. Which started me off on wondering how to do that with my Acer Aspire 5920 laptop.
The Acer Aspire 5920, a fairly old model by now, still serves me extremely well. It's got all the juice I need as the highest intensity of my use is limited to a few rounds of CounterStrike. Plus, it's got fairly good expansion capabilities for all the portable HDDs I need for my large movies/TV shows collection.
Nifty thing even has a 5-in-1 card reader which is able to read PRO Duos, so I'd set out to exploit it. But my seemingly mundane chore turned out into quite an endeavor. Turns out that the card reader slot in my 5920 is sized for the Memory Stick PRO (which is bigger than the PRO Duo), and I didn't have an adapter for the PRO Duo. Thus, began an online hunt to find out if I was gonna get a kiss on the cheek or a knock on my head from my girlfriend.
After a lot of futile clicks, I found a post on a forum by a Shayon who had apparently managed to tame the PRO Duo beast. His entry seemed quite hopeful. I followed the instructions and the card even showed up in My Computer, but trying to open it just threw an "Insert Disk into Drive" error. When I went back to that forum, to my disappointment, the guy also had this exact outcome and nothing further!
Well, after another hour of tinkering around with his idea, I was finally able to crack this case! What worked here will probably work with any card reader that's only designed to accept PRO sized cards. So here's what you'll need:
1. small plastic plate that goes into the Card reader slot, sorta like a cover (it comes inserted into the card reader slot when you buy it)
2. a steady hand and deft fingers!
Disclaimer: The instructions below are given to assist if you're facing a problem trying to access a Memory Stick PRO Duo using a card-reader compatible with the PRO Duo but one that only accepts these with the correct adapter. These steps are from personal experience and have successfully worked for me, but I don't guarantee they'd work for everyone. Also, I have provided fair warning about handling the hardware and won't be responsible for any damage to either the Memory Stick PRO Duo, or the card-reader, so attempt this at your own risk!
* Place the PRO Duo on the the plastic plate at a right angle and position it for entry into the card reader.
* When inserting, the PRO Duo would enter first and as soon as it is about half inserted, slide it slightly to the left till you feel it touch the left edge inside the card reader.
* Now, keep inserting the assembly until you reach the point where the plastic plate also starts to go in until you feel the PRO Duo completely inside and out of reach of your fingers. Be patient, you'll get it right with a couple of tries and a slight amount of force - remember, don't use too much force - its more like trying to nudge or wiggle the card inside rather than bearing down and pushing it in.
* Now, the last tricky and scary part. The internals of the card reader have a sort of push-lock arrangement, just the way a typical camera's card slot has - push in once till it clicks and its locked, push in a second time and it gets unlocked and comes out. So, when you feel that the card is all the way in - plastic plate and all - you'll have to push against what feels like the force of the push-lock's spring mechanism. Again, let me warn you, the thing doesn't take much force, just a slight harder push than before - that's all.
Hopefully, if you could feel the puch-lock activate, then the card should've also made contact with the pins and you should hear the familiar 'pop' of Windows' USB disc detection. If it doesn't, or if you can't open the drive and access the files, just double-back and repeat from the top.
The Acer Aspire 5920, a fairly old model by now, still serves me extremely well. It's got all the juice I need as the highest intensity of my use is limited to a few rounds of CounterStrike. Plus, it's got fairly good expansion capabilities for all the portable HDDs I need for my large movies/TV shows collection.
Nifty thing even has a 5-in-1 card reader which is able to read PRO Duos, so I'd set out to exploit it. But my seemingly mundane chore turned out into quite an endeavor. Turns out that the card reader slot in my 5920 is sized for the Memory Stick PRO (which is bigger than the PRO Duo), and I didn't have an adapter for the PRO Duo. Thus, began an online hunt to find out if I was gonna get a kiss on the cheek or a knock on my head from my girlfriend.
After a lot of futile clicks, I found a post on a forum by a Shayon who had apparently managed to tame the PRO Duo beast. His entry seemed quite hopeful. I followed the instructions and the card even showed up in My Computer, but trying to open it just threw an "Insert Disk into Drive" error. When I went back to that forum, to my disappointment, the guy also had this exact outcome and nothing further!
Well, after another hour of tinkering around with his idea, I was finally able to crack this case! What worked here will probably work with any card reader that's only designed to accept PRO sized cards. So here's what you'll need:
1. small plastic plate that goes into the Card reader slot, sorta like a cover (it comes inserted into the card reader slot when you buy it)
2. a steady hand and deft fingers!
Disclaimer: The instructions below are given to assist if you're facing a problem trying to access a Memory Stick PRO Duo using a card-reader compatible with the PRO Duo but one that only accepts these with the correct adapter. These steps are from personal experience and have successfully worked for me, but I don't guarantee they'd work for everyone. Also, I have provided fair warning about handling the hardware and won't be responsible for any damage to either the Memory Stick PRO Duo, or the card-reader, so attempt this at your own risk!
* Place the PRO Duo on the the plastic plate at a right angle and position it for entry into the card reader.
* When inserting, the PRO Duo would enter first and as soon as it is about half inserted, slide it slightly to the left till you feel it touch the left edge inside the card reader.
* Now, keep inserting the assembly until you reach the point where the plastic plate also starts to go in until you feel the PRO Duo completely inside and out of reach of your fingers. Be patient, you'll get it right with a couple of tries and a slight amount of force - remember, don't use too much force - its more like trying to nudge or wiggle the card inside rather than bearing down and pushing it in.
* Now, the last tricky and scary part. The internals of the card reader have a sort of push-lock arrangement, just the way a typical camera's card slot has - push in once till it clicks and its locked, push in a second time and it gets unlocked and comes out. So, when you feel that the card is all the way in - plastic plate and all - you'll have to push against what feels like the force of the push-lock's spring mechanism. Again, let me warn you, the thing doesn't take much force, just a slight harder push than before - that's all.
Hopefully, if you could feel the puch-lock activate, then the card should've also made contact with the pins and you should hear the familiar 'pop' of Windows' USB disc detection. If it doesn't, or if you can't open the drive and access the files, just double-back and repeat from the top.
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