SanDisk’s parent firm, Western Digital (WD), recently unveiled innovative devices at the Future Memory and Storage Conference (FMS2024). Among these is the first 8TB SD card ever made, a noteworthy development in portable storage technology. In addition, WD revealed a 4TB microSD card, further expanding the capacity for data storage.
Read also: Comparing Hard Drives and Solid State Drives (SSDs) for performance, durability
How many photos can an 8TB SD card hold?
These two new memory cards significantly advance storage capacity since they both adhere to the Secure Digital Ultra Capacity (SDUC) standard. Although the SDUC standard theoretically supports 128TB of storage, these new cards are among the first to utilise this capacity fully. Photographers and videographers can capture many images and videos with the 8TB SD card without worrying about running out of space. For example, an 8TB card could hold roughly 165,000 24MP raw photographs taken with a good camera.
The 4 TB microSD card benefits mobile gadgets like smartphones, drones, and gaming consoles. At 12GB per game, this card could store nearly 660 Nintendo Switch games. Players wouldn’t need to swap cards or worry about storage, making carrying a vast game library on one card easier.
What are the benefits of using an 8TB SD card?
In spite of this, several critical factors must be taken into account. Both the 8TB SD card and the 4TB microSD card adhere to the UHS-I standard, which is slower than the UHS-II standard utilised by numerous high-performance cards. The transfer speeds of UHS-I cards are generally slower, which may not be the most suitable option for consumers who require the rapid movement of large files.
Western Digital has also not released the speed class (V rating) for these new cards, which would show their lowest steady write speeds. For comparison, a 1.5TB SanDisk microSD card from WD had a V10 grade, which meant it could handle transfer speeds of at least 10MB/s, which is pretty slow.
Read also: Lenovo ThinkPad T16 Gen 2 AMD: A Comprehensive Review
It would help if you also thought about the risk. If you store a lot of data on one card, you might lose it if it fails or gets lost. In the past, using several smaller cards was safer than one big card in case one failed. Even so, the fact that such a large amount of data can fit on a single card is very convenient, and Western Digital should be praised for this.
In addition to these memory cards, WD introduced other equally remarkable storage products. One is a 16TB external SSD, which doubles the capacity of the most prominent current external SSDs. Additionally, a portable variant of this SSD is currently being developed.
Although Western Digital has not yet disclosed the release dates or prices for these state-of-the-art storage solutions, due to their advanced features and large capacities, they are anticipated to be priced at a premium.
Western Digital also showed off its BiCS8 performance and PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs, which are made for powerful PCs, especially those used for AI and games. The business showed off a 128TB QLC eSSD for data centres, a 32TB HDD, and a 64TB eSSD for sufficient data storage. Finally, WD showed off a RapidFlex interposer, a gadget that changes data from PCIe SSDs to Ethernet. This makes storage systems more connected and faster.