“Where can I get a multiport SD card reader that holds 10 cards at the same time for external storage on a PC or Mac?”

(Answer requested by Dennis Hayes)

I think I can suggest a better approach; but first, to answer your question: You need a hub, not a reader.

When you plug in a standard card reader — even one with multiple slots for different types of cards — the reader is assigned one address from the PC; whatever card is in the reader then uses that address. The reader is one device, servicing one card.

You want simultaneous access to multiple cards. That’s different.

The easiest, albeit inelegant, solution would be to connect a standard multi-port USB hub to your PC; one with as many ports as you wish (e.g. 10). Plug each of your 10 memory cards into a separate adapter/carrier, and then plug each adapter into a different port on the hub. Each adapter/card will get its own address or drive letter; each will be separately accessible for whatever read/write operations you want to do.

A basic 10-port USB hub starts at around $40; basic SD adapters cost around $5 each. So, you’re looking at a cost of $90-ish and up to create a 10-card reader.

That would work, but is far from ideal. For one thing, it’d be a clumsy, inefficient arrangement — there’d be lots of separate, redundant hardware pieces involved. Plus, for the same cost (around $100) you can currently buy a stand-alone, multi-terabyte external USB drive — probably far more capacity than your 10 SD cards combined. That’s really a far better approach, IMHO.

But if you really want simultaneous access to many memory cards at once, a hub+adapters would do it.

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