Backup Master: Western Digital Media Center

8-in-1 Flash Card Reader

A 6-in-1 card reader seems reasonable and even doable, but how does Western Digital come up with eight different media types with just three visible ports? Let's count them: CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Memory Stick and SD card - these are certainly the well known flash storage media, but that's only four.

What has to be remembered is that CompactFlash cards come in two different types (I and II), and then there's Hitachi's Microdrive, which uses the same interface. In addition to the SD card, the same size multimedia card is in stores, too, and Sony's Memory Stick is available in a pro version that beats the classic variants in terms of both capacity and performance.

Thus if you meticulously add up all of the different flash storage media available, you arrive at a sum total of eight different media.