this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] 67 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Now can we please get them back in phones?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago (2 children)

They are in some phones.. Shop around :)

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, just like headphone jacks. Oh wait...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (3 children)

They are, but mostly in budget phones. If you want a flagship camera or processor as well, you're sadly out of luck. And god forbid you want a folding phone.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

I know, and I do, but the point is choices shouldn't be so limited. They should be standard.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Speak for yourself. My Motorola g73 has a micro SD card slot.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Oh I know, I'm still on Motorola because they have unlockable bootloaders and SD card slots. But in recent years they've started taking them out of some of their mid-range models.

Point is there should be more options. Removing the SD card slot is just a bullshit way to push cloud storage.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 8 months ago (7 children)

I can't fathom a good reason for 4TB SD cards.

Most cameras have CF Express which is probably 5-8 times faster.

Even UHS-III is 600MB/s while CF Express Type B is hitting 4GB/s.

Even so, why would you risk 4TB of data on removable storage.

CF Express is also running PCI-E. This article isn't talking about SD Express.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I think it's primarily targeting the handheld gaming market

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Steam games. I want to have all my 50-100 GB games available without having to decide what to uninstall.

Currently I have two 512gb SD cards for my Steam Deck.

If it craps out, it's okay.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

We need a better storage solution than SD cards…

Doesn’t the steam deck have an upgradeable nvme drive? That would be a much better solution.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

~~80mm~~ 30mm m.2 drives are to much of a niche

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think you mean 30mm (that’s what the steam deck uses, 80mm is the standard).

At about $80 per TB, it is more expensive than the 80mm ones, yes. But still comparable to SD cards an much faster and more reliable.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (2 children)

My laptop has an SD card slot. So if this were reliable I could add a significant permanent storage capacity to my laptop.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

I would happily use one for my music and movies to access them on the go. I already have copies elsewhere, so it would be no big loss if the card died.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago (2 children)

If only I could get this much storage on my Mac.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Meanwhile I'm struggling to find 4MB SD cards, so I can easily overwrite it with random data to securely wipe it between uses.

How the heck do people with 4TB SD cards do data hygiene wipes of their medium before crossing international borders? That would take days..

[–] [email protected] 42 points 8 months ago (1 children)

How the heck do people with 4TB SD cards do data hygiene wipes of their medium before crossing international borders?

They don't

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I don't know what your particular situation is but if you're just using it on computers you could use LUKS or BitLocker or FileVault. Then if you want to wipe it, you only need to destroy the key and the data is rendered effectively gone.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Yeah that's best for most things, but SD cards are generally used in situations where that's not an option. Namely for use in (video) cameras.

The other situation is when I need to transfer a large file to someone else's device where encryption isn't an option (rare but happens)

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

I assume you're joking, but if not: the 4MB of flash you see is not mapped 1:1 with 4MB of actual flash on the SD card. Instead there might be something like 5MB, but your OS only sees 4MB of that.

The extra unallocated space is used as spare sectors (sectors degrade and must be swapped out) or even just randomly if it somehow increases IO performance (depending on the firmware).

Erasing the 4MB visible to your OS will not erase everything, there still may be whole files or fragments of your files sitting in the extra space. Drive-vendor specific commands can reliably access this space (if they exist and are available to you, which they mostly are not). Some secure erase commands may wipe the unallocated space but that's vendor specific, not documented and I don't think even supported over the SD interface (although I might be wrong on this last point).

Encryption and physical destruction are your best bets.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (6 children)
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[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago (1 children)

In addition, manufacturers will make a smaller and easier to lose format.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

That's just Micro SD cards.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I’m guessing with a three day dump estimate? Thermal throttling on SD cards is brutal.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The article says 10MB/s minimum write speed, which would take 4.6 days to transfer 4TB, so... yeah. Even with the "max theoretical transfer rates" of 104MB/s (which is probably just read if anything) that's still almost 11 hours.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (9 children)

Do people setup RAIDs with sd cards? There should be a super mini box for a sd card RAID

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I doubt they would be reliable enough for a RAID array. It would be much better to use m.2 drives.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They're not reliable individually, but they'd be perfectly reliable in RAID if replaced promptly.

Although since SD cards degrade on read, I would want to have at least RAID 6. Reading all the data for a rebuild could result in another one dying.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

It wouldn't be the best of ideas because the flash used for SD cards do not have the same kind of write endurance as other types of flash media.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

More writes, more failures. SD cards work best when you write once and don't delete it for a long time

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago

Come on guys, I've had an 8TB microsd card since 2018...my files just start to act funny whenever it is fuller than 8GB ;)

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Aren't SD cards slow and prone to failures?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The ones used for 4K recordings are not slow 100+MBps, I won't say prone to failure as such, flash storage can only handle a finite number of writes but we can mitigate that by using wear leveling.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (6 children)

That's pretty slow for terabyte sized storage. And slow compared to the alternatives, too (600 MB/s or Gabs/s).

Spinning hard disks are faster than this, too. Have been for decade(s).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

I wish SD Cards also had some specifications for random access speed.

I used to have a UHS-I SanDisk card which felt much faster than my current UHS-III Samsung card. It's really evident when searching through the storage, waiting for photo thumbnails to cache, etc..

I am not sure whether to go for a UHS-I SanDisk or UHS-III Samsung next. That SanDisk might not handle higher bitrate 4K.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

and i still cant use it in most phones cause there is no freaking port!

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago

Finally! Been waiting for this for since Pacman wouldn't fit on my punch card. 2025 here we come!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah but when can I get a 4TB floppy?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

when 4TB is stressed.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

Thank god. I didn't want to live in a world without 4tb SD cards anymore.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago

That's nice, but I'm more interested in prices coming back down. The manufacturers have been pumping up storage prices even though demand has gone down by artificially constricting supply.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Tempting, but I'm waiting to see whether SD cards catch on before buying in.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Western Digital will launch the SD card, which follows the SD Association's Secure Digital Ultra Capacity (SDUC) standard, under its SanDisk brand and market it toward "complex media and entertainment workflows," such as high-resolution video with high framerates, using cameras and laptops, the announcement said.

The spacious card will use the Ultra High Speed-1 (UHS-1) bus interface, supporting max theoretical transfer rates of up to 104 MB per second.

"Attendees will get a preview of the 4TB SD card’s full capacity and learn more about how it will expand the creative possibilities for cameras and laptops," Western Digital said.

Western Digital didn't say what the SD card would cost, but with its advanced capabilities and targeted audience of professional creators, the offering will likely have premium pricing.

However, Western Digital's announcement also comes as SanDisk's reputation for reliable storage is in serious question by professional and long-time customers.

These alleged failures, combined with frustration around Western Digital's limited response to reported data losses, could have professionals with work-critical storage needs consider waiting for another brand to make the leap to 4TB.


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