We don’t usually pay attention to the SD card reader that is usually included in many computers today, however, they could be considered the current replacement for old floppy disk drives. Of course, with the ability to share files over the internet, they aren’t used as much anymore. However, this time we will tell you why install an SD card reader on a computer or another old system is a great idea.
You will be surprised to learn that there are many companies in the world which, because they depend on outdated software which causes errors in the most modern systems or because of fear of touching something to break it, continue to use very old computers, so much so that they don’t even use hard drives with SATA connection, but IDE. So they have a chance of failing one day. Another different scenario is very old systems that work with devices such as CDs, flexible disks where the media degrades over time.
Why should you add an SD card reader to your old PC?
One of the biggest problems that we have been facing for a long time is the conservation of software, that is, the existence of these programs and their versions that appear on different platforms. From a utility point of view, using old versions of current applications is nonsense, but if we take into account that the new versions are less and less optimized vis-à-vis software, then it is important to keep them.
Our advice is that if you have a very old PC, upgrade the system and buy a new one. In the event that for reasons that we are not going to detail you cannot do this, a good option is to connect an SD card reader to your old computer. Of course, it must support USB 2.0 for good transfer speed. So you can install it on any computer that is 20 years old.
All you need is an SD card reader that you can connect to your PC, which will also serve as a once-and-for-all Blu-Ray or DVD replacement. Once you’ve done that, you won’t have to worry about that old and failing hard drive anymore. You just need to duplicate the contents of the hard disk on the new disk and make it the main one. Of course, we don’t recommend such an update on a new PC, as there are much better storage options.
The best upgrade for retro consoles and microcomputers
Another problem is that of extinct systems, mainly for historical reasons, since many of them use formats that break down with age. As a result, many retro system users ended up applying SD cards to their systems through mods. This not only allows you to load several or even collections of games without getting up a thousand times from your chair to change titles.
SD cards are not only better than these formats because they are much more perishable, but because they are based on flash memory they have much higher latency and bandwidth. If we talk about video game consoles, at least up to the PlayStation 2 generation, we can enjoy instant loading speeds and in some cases even faster than cartridges. Of course, in some old consoles, a kind of modified cartridges called Everdrive are used.
In the case of old computers that go with tape or floppy disk, we have the case of recently created devices that allow the use of SD cards in said systems. Although those who use them are a minority, it’s proof that an SD card reader is an upgrade that can give a second life to that microcomputer or console you had stored in the attic.
