Western Digital plans to launch the primary 4TB SD card subsequent 12 months. On Thursday, the storage agency introduced plans to demo the product in particular person subsequent week.
Western Digital will launch the SD card, which follows the SD Affiliation’s Safe Digital Extremely Capability (SDUC) normal, below its SanDisk model and promote it towards “advanced media and leisure workflows,” similar to high-resolution video with excessive framerates, utilizing cameras and laptops, the announcement mentioned.
The spacious card will use the Extremely Excessive Velocity-1 (UHS-1) bus interface, supporting max theoretical switch charges of as much as 104 MB per second. It would assist minimal write speeds of 10 MB/s, AnandTech reported. Minimal sequential write speeds are anticipated to achieve 30 MB/s, the publication mentioned.
With these specs, the upcoming SD card ought to be capable of match storage-hungry video codecs, together with 8K, though the cardboard will not be speedy sufficient to assist uncooked 8K video recording. That helps clarify why Western Digital is initially previewing the providing at The Nationwide Affiliation of Broadcasters’ annual occasion for broadcast and media professionals, which begins tomorrow in Las Vegas.
“Attendees will get a preview of the 4TB SD card’s full capability and be taught extra about the way it will increase the inventive prospects for cameras and laptops,” Western Digital mentioned.
Hopefully, Western Digital will present extra details about the SD card on the occasion, as this week’s announcement did not go into additional particulars, similar to the kind of NAND the cardboard will use or whether or not it can assist the SanDisk-created DDR200/DDR208 mode, which might allow greater knowledge switch speeds of as much as 170 MB/s (however solely with a number that helps that mode).
Western Digital did not say what the SD card would value, however with its superior capabilities and focused viewers {of professional} creators, the providing will possible have premium pricing. The 1TB SanDisk Excessive Professional SDXC UHS-I Card at the moment has a $140 MSRP.
WD’s announcement comes six years after the SD Affiliation, which writes SD requirements, introduced the SDUC normal that bumped the max attainable capability for SD playing cards from 2TB to 128TB. As with many releases of latest requirements, some have been desirous to consider that “SD playing cards might quickly maintain 128TB of storage.” However with 4TB not anticipated to reach till 2025 (assuming there are not any delays), “quickly,” even immediately, is unrealistic. The 2018 normal solely made such capacities a risk. On the time, the max theoretical capacities for an SD card had been 2TB for about 9 years, however essentially the most spacious SD playing cards really accessible for buy on the time have been 512GB.
At the moment, the very best capability SD playing cards available are 1TB (Western Digital additionally this week introduced plans to launch a 2TB SanDisk Excessive Professional SDXC UHS-I reminiscence card at an unspecified date), whereas 2TB microSD playing cards solely turned accessible this 12 months.
With Western Digital’s announcement, the trade inches nearer to SD playing cards’ most potential. For professionals with high-storage wants, that is thrilling information, as having extra succesful know-how opens extra possibiltiies, like working with high-res media.
Nonetheless, Western Digital’s announcement additionally comes as SanDisk’s repute for dependable storage is in critical query by skilled and long-time clients. There are a number of lawsuits about SanDisk Excessive transportable SSDs reportedly failing unexpectedly. These alleged failures, mixed with frustration round Western Digital’s restricted response to reported knowledge losses, might have professionals with work-critical storage wants contemplate ready for one more model to make the leap to 4TB.