As ubiquitous as secure digital or SD
cards are these days, it wasn't too long ago that they weren't king of the hill.
If you bought a digital camera back in the late 1990s or early 2000s, cuz
you're old like me, you probably remember the confusing selection of
memory cards that you had to choose from. Compact flash, smart media, memory
stick. So, how is it then that SD ended up winning the format war? Well,
although SD was originally pushed by several different companies as a
removable storage format that supported DRM for music, hence the name secure
digital. Everyone kind of forgot about that functionality soon after the cards
hit the market and instead took note of their much more convenient size compared
to compact flash and their greater storage potential compared to smart
media. SD also had the advantage of being a more open standard than memory
stick, which today is almost exclusively found on Sony devices, or the XD picture
card, meaning that it became relatively cheap for companies to start including
on their digital cameras, computers, and more portable things like GPS devices.
Even though you could expect to pay about $200 for a 128 megabyte SD card
when they first came out in 2001, prices quickly fell as the format was
introduced into more and more gadgets. So by the mid200s, SD had clearly
started to dominate the market, but the unyielding demand for smaller, higher
capacity storage meant that the technology was still being pushed
forward. 2003 brought us the mini SD
card, followed by the much more widely adopted micro SD card in 2005. So,
thanks to decreases in the size of flash transistors that actually store the data
and an increase in how many can be crammed onto one card, we actually now
have SD cards in capacities that were unthinkable
less than two decades ago. with both standardsized and micro SD cards now
available that can hold over half a terabyte. Meaning that the highest
capacity micro SD card on the market right now can hold over 35,000
times as much data as a standard 3 and 1/2 in floppy while being over 50 times
smaller physically. Unfortunately though, these much higher capacities
mean that not all SD cards will function properly in any slot that will
physically fit them. The original SD spec only supported up to 2 GB, while
SDHC cards can hold up to 32 gigs, and
the newer SDXC can handle up to 2
terabytes. Although cards that spacious aren't on the market yet, unlike
standards like USB or SATA, SD cards
aren't backwards compatible with older readers that only support an older spec.
So SDXC cards won't work in that card
reader from 2007. This matter made worse by the fact that it requires XFAT, a
newer file system that some older versions of Windows don't support
natively. Newer readers, though, are usually fine with older cards. So, aside
from standard SD versus the higher capacity versions, you also need to pay
attention though to the speed rating. Lower-end models might have a number 2 4
6 inside a circle giving you an idea of
the maximum right speed in megabytes per second. While higher-end cards are often
classified as UHS1 or UHS2, indicating
both higher bus speeds and right speeds, with UHS2 cards offering right speeds of
at least 30 megabytes per second, which is important if you're trying to do
something demanding like record 4K video, as the card needs to be able to
support the high data rates to keep up. So, while there's still a lot to look
for when shopping for flash memory, at least the days when there were six or
seven different completely different physical formats vying for your
attention are over. Just try not to drop
your micro SD card between your uh couch cushions, if you know what I mean.
Was that a getting something stuck in your butt joke?
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