Not recognizing external SD camera card (other file managers work OK)

[Ockham]

Hi,
When I connect my camera (Canon EOS, connects using USB) to PC (Win 7) I can, as expected, see the camera's SD card and copy/move/rename, etc, all files on the SD card. Multi Commander does not recognize the camera, does not show anything. I tried to refresh, restart the Multi Commander, no change. I also tried different USB ports (USB 2 and USB 3), and two different PCs running Win 7 and Win 8, the same result.

Windows Explorer has no problem. For testing I also tried another tool, FreeCommander XE, also works as expected, it can see the SD card and manipulate files.

[Mathias (Author)]

I guess that Windows does not give the camera a device letter like  E: F: or some other alphabet letter.
Since MC does not use the Windows Shell (because it is slow, does not always show the truth, eats a lot more memory and many other reasons), it can currently only see devices that Windows assign a device letter to. So if Windows does not assign a drive letter to it, it is not a storage device.
And since Windows does not connect it as a storage device, There is no file systems access to it, To access it require special protocol that MC currently do not support.

[Ockham]

I made a few more experiments connecting Android tablets and mobile phones (different brands). Windows mounts their file systems with names, and indeed does not assign any drive letter, for example: "Canon EOS M", "Xperia Tablet Z" -- as opposed to: "E:", "F:", and so on. HOWEVER once mounted Windows Shell gives full access to their file structure, individual files, and provides expected functionality: for example it creates JPEG previews, allows compression/expansion of individual files, and so on.

I also checked XPlorer2, Q-Dir and FreeCommander XE. It is my understanding that at least XPlorer2 does not use standard Windows Shell (not sure about the other two). All mounted tablets and cameras storage properly.

I found your statement "Windows does not assign a drive letter to it, it is not a storage device" to be incorrect. Windows Explorer shows under "Computer" the following groups of devices:
* Hard Disk Drives
* Devices With Removable Storage
* Portable Devices

Fact that no letter drives are assigned to the "Portable Devices" group does not mean that Win handles them as "non storage devices". All file manipulations and specific storage device command appear to be working just fine, reporting of free/available space is correct, formatting from Win shell is allowed, etc.

While I appreciate that you find Windows Shell to be inferior and flawed, I would like to respectfully point out that when tablets, phones or cameras are connected to Win computer it is actually the Multi Commander which "does not always show the truth", thus is flawed. I appreciate time and work you put in the MC, I appreciate that you offer it free, but, before being hyper critical about standard Windows Shell, perhaps some reality check would be good? There are many common scenarios (for example: transferring files from a camera, copying files to tablets, etc) where the MC fails to deliver, and the "inferior" Windows Explorer delivers without a glitch.

[Mathias (Author)]

I made a few more experiments connecting Android tablets and mobile phones (different brands). Windows mounts their file systems with names, and indeed does not assign any drive letter, for example: "Canon EOS M", "Xperia Tablet Z" -- as opposed to: "E:", "F:", and so on. HOWEVER once mounted Windows Shell gives full access to their file structure, individual files, and provides expected functionality: for example it creates JPEG previews, allows compression/expansion of individual files, and so on.

No you do not have full access to the file system. It might look like it. But technically you do not.

I also checked XPlorer2, Q-Dir and FreeCommander XE. It is my understanding that at least XPlorer2 does not use standard Windows Shell (not sure about the other two). All mounted tablets and cameras storage properly.

I think it uses shell.. but it does matter.

I found your statement "Windows does not assign a drive letter to it, it is not a storage device" to be incorrect. Windows Explorer shows under "Computer" the following groups of devices:
* Hard Disk Drives
* Devices With Removable Storage
* Portable Devices

Fact that no letter drives are assigned to the "Portable Devices" group does not mean that Win handles them as "non storage devices". All file manipulations and specific storage device command appear to be working just fine, reporting of free/available space is correct, formatting from Win shell is allowed, etc.

It is not a storage device in a technical/programmer way, You might think it is because you see the files, But that is because the Shell is lying (it does that a lot)
But actually It gets connected as a WPD (Windows Portable Device) and are using MTP (Media Transport Protocol) to talk to the device. And this is way different from a normal file system. There is no direct file system access.
There are plans and for a Filesystem Plugin for this. But it is not created by it self. it take lot of time from me.

While I appreciate that you find Windows Shell to be inferior and flawed, I would like to respectfully point out that when tablets, phones or cameras are connected to Win computer it is actually the Multi Commander which "does not always show the truth", thus is flawed. I appreciate time and work you put in the MC, I appreciate that you offer it free, but, before being hyper critical about standard Windows Shell, perhaps some reality check would be good?

If I used the shell then a lot of the features in MC would not be possible. and it would also be slower and other issues. There are some thinks that are good about the shell and it gives some stuff for free. But it also hinders you.  When starting with MC I started with using the shell but very very early on I notice that it would not work for what I wanted to do and the shell got in the way.
We all have different needs and requirements when working with files. If you really need all of the shell support then there are a lot of FMs for that. and if not then there is a lot of FMs for that.

There are many common scenarios (for example: transferring files from a camera, copying files to tablets, etc) where the MC fails to deliver, and the "inferior" Windows Explorer delivers without a glitch.

And Windows Explorer does not have a lot of features that MC has, so it fails there.
smartphones/tables uses to be connected as a storage device before, But since the file system can be corrupted if it is changed by the phone and the computer at the same time.  They all started to switch over to WPD/MTP. And that is also going way for some device. Some devices now say use Wifi or cloud storage to transfer files.