World’s Largest SD Card Doubles Capacity to 4TB

Published by Deep Shikha on Apr 18, 2024

Fact-checked by Kate Richards • Fact-checked by Kate Richards

Western Digital (WD) unveiled its latest innovation at the NAB Show last week in Las Vegas — the SanDisk Extreme PRO SDUC UHS-I, a 4TB SD card set to revolutionize storage solutions.

In an announcement, WD said it will release new SD cards under its SanDisk brand, adhering to the SD Association’s Secure Digital Ultra Capacity (SDUC) standard.

Set to launch in 2025, the card is built for demanding media tasks, such as high-resolution and fast-frame-rate video, used in cameras and laptops.

For professionals, this means the ability to store and manage larger datasets on a single card — crucial for tasks like recording and editing 8K video or handling extensive raw photo libraries without frequent swaps or data transfers.

Along with the 4TB card, WD also introduced the 2TB SanDisk Extreme Pro SDXC UHS-I and Extreme Pro microSDXC UHS-I memory cards to accommodate the increasing need for producing and storing more detailed content.

The attendees of the event got a full preview of these powerful cards from WD.

AnandTech reports that the card features an Ultra High Speed-I (UHS-I) interface, which can transfer data up to 104MB/s in UHS104 mode. It also offers a minimum sequential write speed of 30MB/s, sufficient for recording 8K video.

ArsTechnica suggested that while the 4TB SD card can accommodate storage-intensive video formats like 8K, it will not be fast enough to support raw, uncompressed 8K video recording with its current specifications.

Other media card formats for creative professionals include XQD, which has a maximum capacity of 2TB, and CFexpress, valued for its high speed. The newest version, CFexpress 4.0, announced last year, supports faster data speeds but still caps at 2TB.

According to The Verge, the SD Association introduced the Secure Digital Ultra Capacity (SDUC) card specifications in 2018, which envisioned SD cards holding up to 128 terabytes. Progress has been steady but slow, only reaching the 4TB mark as of now.

The Verge also notes that Western Digital has yet to disclose the specific NAND technology used in the new card, indicating that achieving the maximum projected capacity of 128TB could still be far off.

Western Digital has not revealed the pricing for its upcoming 4TB SD card. However, The Verge suggests that based on the current price of the 1TB versions, which sell for around $140, the 4TB model could be priced at over $600.