128TB SD Cards Are Coming (theverge.com)

A new card specification has been announced by the SD Association that should let you store your entire media collection on one SD card. Technically speaking, the new card specification should increase maximum storage on SD cards to 128 terabytes with faster transfer speeds of 985 megabytes per second. The Verge reports: Right now the maximum storage space on an SD card is 2TB, and that limit was promised as far back as 2009, but still hasn't been reached. In 2016, SanDisk unveiled a prototype 1 terabyte SD card that would make it the biggest in the world, but it's still not available to purchase. At the time, SanDisk said that the advancement was necessary to match ever-increasing data-heavy formats like 4K video and VR. However, creating SD cards with massive amounts of storage is cost-prohibitive. SanDisk's 512GB SD card used to cost $800, and though it's dropped in price, is still priced around $300.

Comments

Coming or not?

[manu0601]

If I read the summary correctly, we are far from having even a dozen terrabyte on a SD. Title is badly chosen.

Re:Coming or not?

[Mr D from 63]

Correct. The standard allows for those specs, but no product with anything close to those specs exists.

Lots of other stuff is coming too!

Re:Coming or not?

[Tough Love]

So true, 128TB cards could be ten years away, how dare anybody plan for it now.

Re:Coming or not?

[Tough Love]

2 years at most.

Prices

[DaMattster]

I would just like to see prices fall on SSDs to the same level as regular hard drives. SSDs are still kind of expensive.

Re:Prices

[rtb61]

It's called patents, artificial inflation of profit margins by corrupt corporations and governments, expect patent duration to be extended probably fifty years, corrupt government and the current one certainly is that, will deliver to the corporations regardless of the harm caused, psychopaths will be psychopaths.

Re:Prices

[alvinrod]

It's important to differentiate between the companies that make and sell SSDs and the companies that manufacture the NAND flash memory that is used in SSDs. In the case of the first, there is significantly more competition, but there aren't as many companies that actually make the NAND and it's those that have been accused of price fixing and possibly other anti-competitive behavior.

I also expect that part of the reason SSD prices are falling faster relative to HDD prices is that the bare minimum material cost for an HDD is more expensive. An SSD is just a cheap enclosure around a bunch of NAND flash chips on a board with connectors, an embedded processor, and a few other components that are relatively inexpensive and subject to price decreases as a result of Moore's law. The enclosure for the HDD is more sturdy and made of more expensive materials and other parts that have more of a fixed cost that holds stable.

One advantage that SSDs have is that NAND manufacturers have been willing to move from SLC/MLC NAND as used in the initial SSDs to TLC and now even QLC NAND, which has greatly increased the storage capacity of SSDs and even allows for greater capacity than you can get in an HDD assuming you're willing to pay the obscene costs. This does come at the expense of longevity as you get fewer program-erase cycles when using more bits per cell. For most consumers this doesn't matter as they're unlikely to hit those limits and any SSD is going to be a major speed improvement over an HDD.

I do agree that HDD will likely be relegated to backup and archival purposes. I don't have many computers left that aren't using an SSD for their main drive and I can't see myself using anything but an SSD as a primary in future builds.

What nonsense

[Kjella]

That's like saying with 64-bit computers we'd get 16 exabyte (that's 2^32 * 4GB) of RAM. Sure there's addressing space but it won't happen now and quite possibly never. It's probably good to keep the spec a bit in front of what's realistic though.

Futurama Quote

[Zorro]

"That's a Lot Of Pornography!"

Re: What's the point?

[Bobrick]

See, there's this whole industry dedicated to video production. If you're shooting anything close to professional productions, hell even with prosumer gear today, something like a 64gb sd card is not even worth mentioning. I got 1tb of SD storage over a 512gb and 2x 256gb, and I'm on the market for a recorder/SSD drives setup now. I do run and gun documentary stuff, for the most part, and if I'm out on a shoot in the woods or somewhere remote for a couple of days, 1TB is bare minimum for the whole shoot. Aunt Darlene is probably fine with a 8gb card for the xmas pictures, a professional shoot has other requirements. Release a 12 TB card and I won't care what it costs, it will be paid back the first or second time I use it.

This will hold 6,740,000 still pix on my Olympus

[Applehu Akbar]

If I shoot one picture a minute 365/24, it will take me just under thirteen years to fill up one of these cards. Now that's what I would call a photo trip.

Unfortunately, I would then have to spend 39 years in Lightroom Classic editing this set of pictures. My wife will kill me, especially when she has to sit through the slideshow later.

Re:Storage issues

[edwdig]

Think pro-photographers in multi-hour photo sessions with high res cameras.

Think people recording 4K video.

Think gamers on a Nintendo Switch that prefer downloading their games.

As storage options get larger, people find ways to use the extra space.

Redudancy

[should_be_linear]

I would prefer it to be 5TB card with lots of redundancy using remaining 123TB, so that data would persist hundreds of years on average. I don't think my family will create more then 5TB of data in our entire lifetime anyway.

Re: True...

[Cederic]

What an interesting misinterpretation of how moderation on Slashdot works.

If you have mod points, you ARE a moderator. Moderate moderately.

Re:This will hold 6,740,000 still pix on my Olympu

[Cederic]

My wife will kill me, especially when she has to sit through the slideshow later.

Nah. You'll still only have four you want to keep.

Mod system

[DrYak]

There's an efficient mod system on /. spam will rather quickly down voted to -1.

If you don't like the spam, browse at some higher level like 1 or 2 (and keep -1 and 0 hidden).
If you're afraid of your eyes getting hurt by some spam, don't jump straight into a new article on the second it's published on /. , but wait a bit for the mod storm to settle down.

I personally find it absolutely remarkable that /. close to never deletes post. (the Scientology post being the first ever deletion).
There's no actual censorship, only moderation. That bring some content more forward than other, depending on the current zeitgeist anong /.ers, but never deletes content, every voice could be heard if you decide to browse at level -1 or click on "show hidden comments".
It's remarkable and should it kept this way.

Just ignore the troll you don't like. And don't feed them.

Also APK doesn't exist anymore, he was replaced by a swarm of machine learning bots which was trained on his insane rambling and are currently imitating him, troll posting, calling each other ne'er-do-wells with fake names and complaining at each other for the impersonation.

Re:Depends from whom ?

[jabuzz]

A quick check on amazon.co.uk shows that I can get from Amazon themselves 512GB SD cards from SanDisk, Kingston and PNY.

You can also get from SanDisk a 400GB microSD card, and Integral do a 512GB microSD, though I am not sure the uplift in price from 400GB is worth it.

Can't see anything from Samsung on a quick Google, but 512GB is a thing, though I guess demand is quite limited.

I have 32GB onboard on my phone and a 128GB card for all my audiobooks and photos/videos. Nice to see the price for higher capacities has dropped somewhat in the last 9 months. You can get 256GB microSD for the price I paid for 128GB now.