
SanDisk SD memory card 'largest ever' - ilghiro
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29175093
======
bane
Honestly, 512GB in a removable postage stamp is the stuff of Science Fiction.
I remember when I was kid in the early 90s and in my school computer club and
we sat down to sketch out what kind of computer we'd have in the _YEAR 2100_
and I put down the ridiculous storage size...something like 24GB or something.
I wasn't even close.

1 of these could have easily stored a copy of all of the internet traffic that
happened over the course of a day in 1993. [1]

Now we've got spaceships, VR, pocket sized personal computers with always on
global network communications, video calls, amazing smart watches, and now
half a _terabyte_ in something the size of my big toenail.

It kind of feels like the future we were promised pre-internet is finally
starting to happen.

My less than a year old desktop's main drive is the same storage size as this.
In a year it will be the size of my fingernail and I can put it in my phone
and my tablet.

1 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terabyte#Illustrative_usage_ex...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terabyte#Illustrative_usage_examples)

------
flynnieous
Now you can lose even more pictures and video when your SD goes bad. Woohoo!

There are a lot of photographers who won't use SDs larger than 8GB for just
that reason--lose one, you don't lose everything.

~~~
mpeg
Or you could just back things up regularly.

~~~
pessimizer
With your magic instant remote backup machine?

~~~
jonknee
Sure...

[http://www.amazon.com/EZOPower-Portable-Wireless-External-
Sm...](http://www.amazon.com/EZOPower-Portable-Wireless-External-
Smartphone/dp/B00EP13JBC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410536260&sr=8-1&keywords=sd+backup)

I mean it does cost $35, but it's pretty much exactly a magic remote backup
machine (that can also charge your gear!). Or you can spend more cash and get
one with an integrated hard drive and need no other devices.

------
Someone1234
I know people are going to scuff at the $800 price tag, but frankly it CAN be
justified for certain things. For example a lot of studios use a direct feed
to a terminal (e.g. WiFi/USB delivery of pictures as they're taken) but they
also utilise an SD card as a "backup" in case the photo is somehow lost or the
computer was down.

Changing out SD cards on an SLR doesn't really take very long, but it does
disrupt the workflow (particularly when you have to take a thousand pictures
in an hour or more, that could be a dozen SD card changes) and $800 for a card
which might last you the whole day might be worth it.

It definitely won't be useful for your kid's birthday party or even to film
your school project. But as an industrial tool there are definitely uses for a
card such as this (although external SSDs are starting to become "big," so
maybe less so than a year ago).

~~~
jacquesm
That $800 will be $29.95 before the decade is out. And by then it will be a
micro-sd version.

If you don't mind my asking, what application would require a photographer to
take 1,000 pictures / hour?

~~~
photoGrant
For me it's perfect when we tether our shoots to an SSD Macbook Pro.

We can 'set and forget' the SD card in the SD slot and have ChronoSync
automatically transfer anything in our tether folder to it. It's a great
backup/scratch disk. $800 is chump change for a professional photography
studio.

edit: I love that I was downvoted for this.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Possibly because there is zero connection between your comment and the parent
comment?

~~~
jacquesm
Actually, there is and I got the connection perfectly. It's an automatic way
to have a separate copy of a high volume shoot where you don't have to
interrupt shooting because of the tethering.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Parent comment talks about the price and how in a bit is will be cheaper and
smaller. And then asked about when a person would need 1000 pics an hour. You
didn't really connect any of that. You talked about tethering.

edit: I'm not saying your comment was lame or stupid or wrong or whatever. It
just didn't really fit as a reply to the parent. Perhaps someone else thought
so too. I also would not have downvoted you for it. But maybe someone else
did.

~~~
jacquesm
He replied to me, and I got the reference. I realized that the studio implied
the 1000 pics / hour. That thought had not occurred to me but the example made
it clear. You don't always need to have everything spelled out. The other
example mentioned (sports photography) and fashion used to rely on motor
drives, I had completely forgotten about those. And they would go through a
roll of film like there was no tomorrow. It's just not something I ever used
or did.

Also, I think you are confusing your parties in this thread.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
my bad. I did confuse the two of you. never mind.

------
3rd3
Amazing, that is 320 GB/cm^3. I didn't know that we have possibly already
passed the information density of the human brain (~80 GB/cm^3).

~~~
jacquesm
You can't really compare passive storage with combined processing and storage.
The brain computes all over, it does not have a 'data bus' or a von Neumann
like bottle-neck as far as we know today.

~~~
3rd3
Of course not. However, I would have guessed that the 3-dimensional structure
of the brain would still have higher information density compared to
2-dimensional IC's (+ wiring + heat regulation) by some orders of magnitude.
But I guess neurons aren't that small after all.

~~~
jacquesm
They're not all that small _and_ there is a ton of support infrastructure and
deadweight around them.

------
jacquesm
I love it how in one paragraph they state that capacity has increased over 3
(decimal) orders of magnitude but there is a magical hard cap of 2T (only a
factor 4 removed from where we stand today). If that's correct then 2^10 =
1000, over 10 years that's one doubling per year so we are 2 years away from
reaching the ceiling in SD cards. You read it first on the BBC website.

~~~
revelation
The article seems widely confused. It goes from SD cards to 4K movies to HD
movie storage to _the cloud_.

~~~
astrodust
Obviously the cloud is just a pile of SD cards connected together.

------
namlem
I wish more devices had SD slots. Particularly Windows Tablets. There's plenty
of room in there, and SD cards are way better than microSD.

~~~
insky
Except when you tread on them. As I found out yesterday. I had another that
got damaged in the post, bent and dead.

~~~
jacquesm
When I send them in the mail (which I do rarely but it does happen) I sandwich
them between two taped together pieces of thin wood. That means it's no longer
a very thin envelope but it increases the chances of safe arrival. They also
always go registered.

USB sticks tend to be more robust.

~~~
jonknee
What about the little plastic cases that they come in?

~~~
insky
Don't the MicroSD cards come with plastic cases, but not the larger SD cards?

~~~
jonknee
Every SD card I have gotten has arrived in a case. I'm sure there are
exceptions, but you can also buy them cheaply (there's a 10-pack for sale as
an add-on item for $4.25 at Amazon).

~~~
insky
Since realised that I've bought both SD and MicroSD cards with and without
cases. A MicroSD got bent in the post, bought as new. And a accidentally put
my foot on an SD while shuffling cards.

------
carlosvega
Also remember the 128GB microSD.

This new 512GB SD could be useful for 4K video and that kind of stuff.

[http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Adapter-
SDSDQUAN-128G-G4A-Newe...](http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Adapter-
SDSDQUAN-128G-G4A-Newest-
Version/dp/B00M562LF4/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1410622135&sr=1-1&keywords=128GB+sandisk+micro+sd)

------
martin_
Is "Extreme Pro" really the best name they could come up with?

It would be sweet (as others have hinted towards) if there could be some built
in redundancy, i.e. two 256GB partitions that act as a raid.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Not sure SDs fail that way - the flash is usually pretty reliable. I think its
mechanical stress (flexing in your pocket; wet or humid conditions causing
corrosion to fragile connections) or static shock that causes the on-board
controller to fail. In those cases the flash is still good, but you can't get
at it.

------
BenoitEssiambre
obligatory [http://xkcd.com/691/](http://xkcd.com/691/)

~~~
jacquesm
Obligatory links rarely are.

