Running out of camera or game storage could soon be a thing of the past – SanDisk owner Western Digital has announced a pair of groundbreaking memory cards: the world’s first 8TB SD card, alongside the world’s first 4TB microSD card. Whether you’re shooting photos or video, both capacities can unlock enormous creative flexibility – assuming you look after them.
When it comes to memory cards, it’s always been a race for space. These new cards put Western Digital right at the head of the field, pushing the boundaries of portable storage – and they come hot on the heels of the announcement of the first 4TB SD card, unveiled in April.
With a SanDisk 8TB SDUC UHS-I card in one of the best mirrorless cameras, you could shoot roughly 165,000 raw files at 24MP. Regardless of your industry or genre, that’s a massive amount of photos on a single card. Likewise, with a SanDisk 4TB microSDUC UHS-I in a Nintendo Switch, you could store a library of over 660 games with a file size of 12GB. That’s considerably more than anything else on our list of the largest microSD cards.
Announced as part of the Future of Memory and Storage Conference in California, the two SanDisk cards set a new benchmark for digital storage. Both use the Secure Digital Ultra Capacity (SDUC) standard, which can theoretically deliver up to 128TB of storage capacity.
Western Digital already upped the ante this year, announcing a 4TB SD card and a 2TB microSD card at the NAB Show in April. These new cards take things a step further, once again unlocking twice the capacity – though we don’t yet know when they’ll go on sale or what their price tags will be. For reference, the 1TB Extreme Pro card is the way to go $140 / £135 on Amazonso expect an 8TB version to cost significantly more.
More space than most people need?
In today’s age of 8K video and high-res stills, storage capacity is crucial for a seamless workflow. High-capacity memory cards mean you can shoot for longer before having to switch to a different card. For professionals, an 8TB SD card offers the tempting prospect of using one card for an entire shoot.
A 4TB microSD card does the same for top drones, most of which use microSD storage. So do many of the best smartphones and handheld gaming devices, including the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck. With SanDisk’s new card, you no longer need to carry a wallet full of microSD cards.
There are a few caveats, though. Both of the new memory cards announced by Western Digital are UHS-I. That means they’re slower than many of the best SD cards and best microSD cards, which are UHS-II rated. So while you’ll get a lot more storage, you’ll get slower transfer speeds.
Western Digital also didn’t share a V-rating for either card. The existing SanDisk 1.5TB Ultra microSDXC UHS-I card has a V10 speed rating, which means minimum transfer speeds are slow at 10MB/s. The SanDisk 4TB Extreme Pro SDUC announced in April does better with a V30 rating, meaning it can handle at least 30MB/s. But even that may limit burst speeds and video frame rates.
Aside from speed, there’s still the concern of loss or failure. It’s long been a best practice to use backup cards, but also to spread your data—whether it’s images, videos, or files—across multiple cards. That way, if one fails or is lost, you won’t lose your entire library. While an 8TB card offers a huge convenience advantage, many people will likely prefer multiple smaller cards for peace of mind.
Still, there’s no denying that Western Digital has accomplished something impressive here. Considering that the largest SD cards in 1999 only had 32MB of storage, an 8TB memory card is a big step up. There’s no official word on pricing yet, but don’t expect the new cards to be cheap.
