hi folks, I'm at loss with a simple task: I need my SD card, located in my Nikon D800, connected via USB to win 7 laptop, to be recognised as a drive.

It works fine with the cam, picture transfer is also flawless, it ist just that win7 recognises it only as a portable device, but it is not listed in disk management's list.

Any ideas..? Is it because I use my DSLR cam to connect the card with windows? Would it work only in a USB drive?

thanks once again.

how old is the laptop? some older SD slots wont read SDHC, and I am not sure about SDXC.. possible the reader in the laptop is the issue. Try looking for a driver update for it. Also, you haven't just installed the OS and forgot the chipset drivers ? missing/old drivers could possibly cause this.
Other possibility your camera may need a firmware upgrade to correctly format SD for use in and out of camera. (unlikely but should check for firmware upgrade anyway)

might be helkful to say what SD card and laptop..

Apparently your camera use MTP or PTP to expose the card. The only chance that you can change this is your camera might allow you to change it to MSC (Mass Storage Class) mode like some cell phone does in its setting. Otherwise you'll need a card reader to expose it as a disk.