
SanDisk 1TB MicroSD Card Review - rahuldottech
https://mashable.com/review/sandisk-extreme-1tb-microsd-card-review/
======
Someone1234
What's odd is that back when Compact Flash was the norm a lot of equipment had
2x slots for concurrent writes (i.e. your photograph/video is immediately
duplicated in two places), whereas in 2019 even though SD/MicroSD is much
smaller and their related sockets are too, combo write systems are fairly rare
(only on the highest end pro systems).

For example, I had a $500 camera that used CF and it had two sockets. You
won't find anything below $1K that has that with SD Cards today, even if it is
cheaper and smaller than ever. It is a really odd backslide.

~~~
Youden
It's not quite as extreme as you say: Fujifilm's X-T3, Sony's A7III and
Panaonic's GH5 for example all have two slots and they're definitely not the
highest end pro systems, I'd say they're more like mid-range prosumer.

This is speculation but it may have been that back when you bought your $500
camera, a single CF card wasn't been able to hold many photos, so you could
insert two cards and start filling the second when the first was full. It
could also have been that CF was relatively unreliable.

Today, regular consumers can fit thousands of photos on a single SD card,
which from a reputable brand will be pretty reliable (I've never had a
Sandisk, Sony or Samsung SD card die on me while shooting). The only people
who need extra reliability are professionals who lose a great deal of money in
that 1 in 1000 case where an SD card dies.

~~~
Someone1234
> It's not quite as extreme as you say: Fujifilm's X-T3, Sony's A7III and
> Panaonic's GH5 for example all have two slots

And they're all $1200+ cameras (with no lenses). That's a substantial price
for a feature that has become cheaper to add over the years. An SD-Card bay is
under $2, the plastic bespoke door that covers both bays likely costs more
than adding the second bay would.

Strikes of artificial price segregation, the whole "prosumer" tier didn't even
exist back in the mid to early 2000s.

> The only people who need extra reliability are professionals who lose a
> great deal of money in that 1 in 1000 case where an SD card dies.

Almost all photos are once in a lifetime. That wedding, birth, or even
vacation likely won't happen again (and if it did it would be different
anyway). Arguing that nobody "needs" reliability until profits are on the line
isn't a particularly compelling argument in my opinion.

~~~
Youden
> An SD-Card bay is under $2, the plastic bespoke door that covers both bays
> likely costs more than adding the second bay would.

I think you're underestimating the cost quite a lot. It's not just a piece of
plastic and a few bits of wire, you also need a high performance I/O
controller to go with it. Assuming SD card readers aren't massively
overpriced, you're looking at closer to $5-$10.

Then there's the space considerations. If you've seen a teardown of a modern
camera, especially mirrorless, you've seen that they're quite densely packed.
It's not necessarily trivial to find the space for an SD card slot.

I agree that if it were essentially free that more cameras should have them
but I'm not so sure that it's as trivial to add them as you make it out to be.

> Arguing that nobody "needs" reliability until profits are on the line isn't
> a particularly compelling argument in my opinion.

My argument isn't so much that nobody "needs" reliability as due to modern
reliability, few people would use it if they had it. It's very rare to hear
about a dying SD card so it's not something an average person considers when
buying a camera. Even if cameras had dual slots, I doubt your average family
going on vacation to Disney would think to buy a second SD card for it.

Since few people want it and there is a cost for it, it makes sense to get rid
of it.

------
MrZongle2
In 1991 the Army unit I was assigned to was getting modernized -- instead of
paper maps, transparencies and grease pencils we were going the way of digital
terrain data and maps via some custom software running on SPARCstations. I was
particularly blown away by the large hard drive one of the contractors showed
me -- a 20+ pound behemoth that had a whopping _1 Gigabyte_ of storage. At the
time I had an Amiga 500 with two floppy drives, which paled in comparison.

Seeing a commercially-available 1Tb SD card amazes me in the same manner.

~~~
cr0sh
As someone who's first computer was an 8-bit machine with only 16k of RAM -
and a cassette tape drive for storage (all circa 1984)...

...well, this is kinda neat.

~~~
bradknowles
My first computer was a Commodore Vic-20, with 5KB of RAM and we splurged
hundreds of dollars for the cassette tape drive. I think that was 1982 or
maybe 1983.

Years later, I worked for Imprimis (since bought by Seagate), and I worked
closely with the manufacturing engineer responsible for the Wren VII line of
hard drives. Those were the first consumer-grade SCSI hard drives that had 1GB
of raw storage.

I've still got some of the magnet fragments taken from some of the early
drives that came off the line. Those damn things can't be removed from your
refrigerator just by pulling on them -- they're too strong. You can only slide
them, or tip them, and hope you don't get your fingers caught.

We've come a long way.

------
pinche2
Things has certainly changed... Here's a 5 MB (!) hard disk from back in the
days: [http://i.imgur.com/7iGch3c.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/7iGch3c.jpg)

~~~
nkg
I have just forwarded this to my teammates who upload 9MB images!

------
pcurve
My head hurts processing how it's possible to put so much storage there. If
you strip away the protective plastic and other non-storage components, how
much physical space is there?

Also, new spec sets the ceiling at 128TB. 128TB!

I'm guessing there will be another format before we ever reach 128TB, but
still. What an amazing time we live in.

Btw, 400GB one is $53 on amazon.

------
mikehotel
> I irresponsibly put a nearly full 400GB microSD card in my pocket and
> somehow lost the dang thing while fishing out change to tip my cab driver.

Misery loves company. This has happened more times than people will want to
admit.

If only [DSLR] cameras supported encrypted memory cards. [Edit: With
smartphone cameras improving so rapidly, perhaps this will become a moot
point.]

~~~
javagram
I dropped a microSD in my car once and despite looking around for 10 minutes
with a flashlight eventually gave up (I think it probably fell through a crack
into the inside of the car.)

At least a lot of DSLR or mirrorless ILCs still use full size compactflash or
SD cards which are easier to handle and not drop.

------
debt
Fascinating. A microSD card is 0.5 grams. I could tape one of these to a
postcard, overnight for $25 using USPS and probably achieve a faster data rate
than I could if I just send it over the air.

~~~
anamexis
Assuming a drop-off at 5 PM and a delivery at 9 AM, that's a data rate of 139
Mbps.

~~~
gooseus
True, but it seems like the max weight for a letter/postcard is 3.5 ounces
(~99 grams), also a postcard is about 148x105mm while a microSD is 15x11mm.

I would propose making your postcard out of a 9x9 grid of 1TB microSDs and
tape to give you an 81TB postcard that can be delivered overnight at the
minimum price while providing 11.25 Gbps given the numbers you used.

~~~
kruffin
Sobering to think of the true (hardware only) price of that postcard in full
view of anyone handling it: $36k ($450 * 81).

But amazing to think how far technology has advanced.

~~~
setr
Exchanging data and money offline, in a very compact format :-)

------
ChuckMcM
I imagine at times like this a small USB-3.2 device which is a RAID-6 array of
20 or 30 microSD cards, probably a small FPGA to provide the 30 port SDIO
device that can do 100MB/s per channel, a two gigabyte static ram with battery
backup (coin cell) for holding open stripe state, and a SCSI or SAS export
point for reporting out as a drive. Device is probably the size of a deck of
cards, maybe smaller, consume or feed data at a GB/s all day.

That would be pretty freaking amazing.

~~~
crest
It would offer good throughput but there is no way to hide the latency.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Could you elaborate on that thought? My experience is that it is possible to
create a storage element with arbitrary throughput and latency (within a
fairly wide design space) by composing storage elements.

~~~
naniwaduni
You can create a storage element with arbitrarily _large_ latency...

------
dfeojm-zlib
I think we're headed to a future where fast, permanent storage is mostly in a
small slot (similar to MicroSD) form-factor, just like scifi/future movies of
old. The slots will get smaller, hopefully there will be more than one on
tablets and whatever passes for laptops/desktops. And I'm sure they'll figure
out a way to converge these slots and USB-C into something else new to make
everyone buy all new dongles and adapters "USB-D."

------
hajile
That's nice, but how many hours would it take to fill that space?

~~~
eesmith
> According to my Disk Speed Test results, the 1TB microSD card plugged into
> the iMac (via a generic SD card adapter) was capable of write speeds up to
> 60MB/s and read speeds up to 90MB/s.

That's 3 hours.

~~~
hajile
Is that consistent? Most cards seem to slow to a crawl on large writes

------
novok
Now we need sd express versions and stop getting limited by 100mb/s speeds

------
iam_varunnair
Wow, Build for photographers and videographers.

