Western Digital Previews 4 TB SD Card: World’s Highest-Capability

Western Digital this week is previewing the business’s first 4 TB SD card. The system is being showcased on the NAB commerce present for broadcasters and content material creators and can be launched commercially in 2025.

Western Digital’s SanDisk Excessive Professional SDUC 4 TB SD card complies with the Safe Digital Extremely Capability normal (SDUC, which permits as much as 128TB). The cardboard makes use of the Extremely Excessive Pace-I (UHS-I) interface and is rated for pace Class 10, due to this fact supporting a minimal pace of 10 MB/s and a most information switch fee of 104 MB/s when working in UHS104 (SDR104) mode (there’s a catch about efficiency, however extra on that later). WD’s SD card can also be rated to satisfy Video Pace Class V30, supporting a minimal sequential write pace of 30 MB/s, which is believed to be ok for 8K video recording, above and past the 4K video market that Western Digital is primarily aiming the forthcoming card at.

For now, Western Digital shouldn’t be disclosing what NAND is within the SanDisk Excessive Professional SDUC 4 TB SD card. Given the excessive capability and comparatively distant 2025 launch date, WD could also be targetting this as certainly one of their first merchandise to make use of their forthcoming BiCS 9 NAND.

And whereas not listed in WD’s official press launch, we’d be shocked if the forthcoming card did not additionally help the off-spec DDR200/DDR208 mode, which permits for increased switch charges than the UHS-I normal usually permits by way of double information fee signaling. Western Digital’s current-generation SanDisk Excessive Professional SDXC 1 TB SD card already helps that mode, permitting it to achieve learn speeds as excessive as 170 MB/s, so it might be shocking to see the corporate drop it from newer merchandise. That stated, the catch with DDR208 stays the identical as at all times: it is a proprietary mode that requires a appropriate host to utilize.

Western Digital has not disclosed how a lot will its SanDisk Excessive Professional SDUC 4 TB SD card value. A 1 TB SanDisk Excessive Professional card prices $140, so one could make guesses concerning the value of a 4 TB SD card that makes use of cutting-edge NAND.