How Does a USB Card Reader Work?
USB card readers are small devices that connect to a USB port to read portable media cards. They can accept one or many formats of media cards, such as SD, xD or CompactFlash. If your computer doesn’t have a built-in card reader, you will need a USB card reader to transfer data from your media card to your hard drive. Depending upon the reader, there may be one or more slots to accept different types of media cards. Media cards are inserted into the slots to be read. When you access the files through your computer, the card reader sends electrical signals into media card through the contacts on the end of the card’s casing. These electrical signals are used to read the data stored on the media card. Like all form of solid-state memory, media cards use a series of transistors to record data. These transistors are aligned to represent binary data, the base form of all computer files. If the electrical current sent from the USB card reader can pass through the transistor, the section is r
