Sony Won't be Outdone; Working on 2TB Memory Cards
Posted 01/08/09 at 09:09:41 PM by Paul Lilly
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Two terabytes of storage on a single memory stick might have been unheard of just a short while ago, but now it appears it will be a race to see who can reach the capacity milestone first. Taking a tag-team approach, SanDisk and Sony are working together to create two expanded formats in the Memory Stick series, the Memory Stick format for Extended High Capacity and the Memory Stick HG Micro format.
It's the Extended High Capacity format that boosts recording capacity up to 2TB, or 60 times more storage than the Memory Stick PRO format's 32GB ceiling. Meanwhile, the HG Micro format sports some technical enhancements, including an enhanced 8-bit parallel interface and 60MHz interface clock frequency, to make a 60MBps (480MBps in theoretical value) data transfer speed possible. By comparison, the Memory Stick Micro format uses a 4-bit parallel interface and a 40MHz interface clock frequency.
No release date has yet been given, but SanDisk and Sony have to be feeling the pressure from the SD Association, who recently announced a new card spec called SDXC, which also promises up to 2TB of memory and read/write speeds of 104MB/s. As our own Andy Salisbury points out, that's enough to accommodate 100 high-definition movies, 60 hours of HD recording, or up to 17,000 high-res photos. Wicked.
I remember having a computer
Submitted by linux_dork on Fri, 05/01/2009 - 10:01am
I remember having a computer with a 2 GB harddrive, and that was huge. A few years later, I had a HP Jornada handheld with a 2 GB sd card in it. I was all like "woah, times have really changed."
Now I see this, and I'm like "woah, I was born in the freakin' dark ages".
Submitted by Germ on Sun, 01/11/2009 - 5:39am
Why does Sony continue to insist on perpetuating their proprietary memory card format???? It is a complete pain in the butt to have to keep up with card readers for my one or two Sony devices AND then everything else... it seriously makes me buy non-Sony stuff whenever possible.
Submitted by Pixelated on Sun, 01/11/2009 - 12:48pm
When I saw the headline I was going to say the same thing.
I DON'T CARE ABOUT SONY OR IT'S CRAPPY PROPRIETARY HARDWARE. EVEN IT THEY MADE IT TO 100TB I WILL NEVER, EVER PURPOSELY BUY ANYTHING FROM SONY AGAIN!
Submitted by Forty_Caliber on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 10:24am
BlueRay? That's Sony and not likely to be unseated anytime soon... though the DVD is still close to 4 times stronger in sales, still.
Submitted by savage4naves on Fri, 01/09/2009 - 10:30am
2TB of storage is overkill. Nice to have though...
A day without laughter is a day wasted...
Nice Picture LMAO
Submitted by pcwizmtl on Fri, 01/09/2009 - 7:28am
Nice Picture LMAO
compatibility
Submitted by Bravo_18 on Fri, 01/09/2009 - 4:34am
just a question...is this card backward compatible with sony's products that use SD card?...i mean even if its 2 TB..can the device see it or read it as 2TB?...
2TB
Submitted by WarCrime342 on Thu, 01/08/2009 - 9:12pm
I can hardly believe it. Ususally larger HDs hold way more than those smaller cards.
Submitted by decapitor on Thu, 01/08/2009 - 8:52pm
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that they just invented a filesystem that theoretically could fit 2 TB, not that they are anywhere near putting that on a card. I would be very surprised to see anything over 128GB in a card in the next year. I hope I'm wrong though.
Submitted by Syntax on Thu, 01/08/2009 - 10:03pm
"The first batch of retail cards will hit before March with read/write speeds up to 104MBps in unknown capacities, though certainly less than 2TB on day one."
Looks like we'll have to wait a little bit, but I'm none too worried, since I don’t feel like buying a new laptop just for a new SD card standard to be built in.
Also, the FS they are using is exFAT, which does lend itself to being what makes the 2TB flash card possible, but I imagine it's simply a new architecture they're employing, and the FS was simply convenient to use.
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