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Panasonic Working On 2-Terabyte SD Cards

An anonymous reader writes "SD cards with a theoretical maximum capacity of 2TB are in development by Panasonic and the SD Association, it has been announced. The technology is called 'Secure Digital Extended Capacity', or 'SDXC', and Panasonic has announced it will soon show off a 64GB SDXC card. Using the new technology, read/write speeds are set to hit 300MBps. SanDisk and Sony are using the same standard to develop Extended Capacity cards in Sony's Memory Stick Pro and Memory Stick Micro range. SDXC utilises Microsoft's new exFAT file system — AKA 'FAT 64' — which first appeared in Windows Vista SP1, and has a theoretical file size limit of 16 exbibytes." Reader xlotlu adds a note about the "proprietary exFAT file system, which is available for licensing under NDA. There are currently no specific patents on exFAT, but its legal status is uncertain since it's based on FAT. The FAT patents have been previously upheld in court."

3 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. Waste of time by ickleberry · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Since everyone is getting rid of DRM anyway would it not be a good idea to drop the SD standard altogether and continue where MMC left off? a bit like the way Sony are getting rid of MagicGate

    SD is just a RIAA-approved version of MMC with extra DRM features added. Maybe I'm just a bitter old sod but I find this continuation of the SD standard and it's DRM suspicious, perhaps they are waiting for a good time to re-introduce DRM on a massive scale and since every SD card ever made already supports it they will have no problem implementing it

    I bet most the supposedly hardcore RIAA-hater nutjobs don't even realise SD has the built in DRM. They have been selling DRM-enabled cards for about 10 years now and just because the SD DRM hasn't seen any widespread use nobody batts an eyelid.

  2. More proof it's too late for copyright. by w0mprat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With the continual increase in the capacity of storage, exponentially decreasing cost per size, and ever increasing bandwidth to link it all together, I wonder if there is there any use worrying about piracy.

    You could say piracy moved to the internet because floppy disks were useless and CD/DVD burning costly, even when it's now rather cheap. Generally piracy has been scaling with availability of bandwidth and storage. But is there a point where it gets so stupidly cheap and powerful that old world business models become completely untenable?

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  3. ZFS? by argent · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Given that ZFS has been optimized for flash, why bother with FAT?