America’s leading provider of hard drives and memory gadgets, Western Digital officially unveiled the prototype for the world’s first 1TB SD card, powered by SanDisk, at the Photokina event in Cologne, Germany, on Tuesday.
The card, according to UPI, is reportedly selling online for about $260. But there haven’t been any further developments on the card’s release, no fixed dates and the one showcased at Cologne was still only a prototype.
A statement issued on SanDisk’s official website celebrates the almost two decades of development that allowed them to get to this point today.
“SIXTEEN YEARS AGO WE INTRODUCED THE FIRST SANDISK 64MB SD™ CARD AND TODAY WE ARE ENABLING CAPACITIES OF 1TB. OVER THE YEARS OUR GOAL HAS REMAINED THE SAME; CONTINUE TO INNOVATE AND SET THE PACE FOR THE IMAGING INDUSTRY”, said Dinesh Bahal, vice president of Product Management.
The future of data storage
The press release also highlights the environment in which the new SD Extended Capacity card (or SDXC) will develop. It mentions photographers and videographers as the projected first consumers, who are demanding more storage space than ever because of technologies like 4K, 8K, 3D, 360 videos and the advent of VR.
An article at N4BB states that the latest storage behemoth in SanDisk roster, the 512GB SD, can hold an approximate of 4 hours of 4K video, 12 hours of 1080p HD video, about 125,000 songs and approximately 33,000 photographs at 22mp. The new 1TB iteration will double these numbers and add more room for new resolutions like the ones mentioned above.
The article also noted that the 2014 retail price for the 512GB card was about $800. Consumers can expect a similar starting price for the 1TB at its official release date.
The futuristic element of this new version was also noted within WD’s press release by Sam Nicholson, CEO of Stargate Studios. He emphasized that the new card would bring significant improvements into the workflow of video professionals, who still suffer the dire need to swap memory cards while working for lack of storage.
SanDisk Extreme Pro 1TB SD card elevates the storage gap from its founding 64MB predecessor to approximately 16,000 times more storage. An article on The Verge cited possible cons, such as its apparent expensiveness (which will probably still discourage many users), slow reading and writing speeds and the risk of a corrupted 1TB card, which could spell hundreds of gigabytes on losses for users.
Source: SanDisk
