SanDisk's latest flash storage module will be able to handle more than half a terabyte of files.
If you thought you needed a bigger SD card for your camera, SanDisk has a new answer for you. According to a report from BBC, the technology company recently announced the release of a brand new, 512 gigabyte SD memory card.
No, you did not read that wrong. SanDisk’s latest flash storage module will be able to handle more than half a terabyte of files, and comes a decade after one of the company’s top-selling products was a 512 megabyte memory card. Oh how the times of changed.
Based on the BBC report, it sounds like the 512 GB SD card is geared mostly toward filmmakers, especially those interested in shooting in 4K resolution. 4K is more or less the successor to HD in the video display world, as it offers roughly four times the resolution of what we currently think of as “high-definition.”
As it becomes more and more popular, 4K resolution will bring about greater levels of crispness, clarity, and detail than the film and television industries have ever seen. Of course, since 4K is four times the resolution of HD, it also calls for much greater file sizes. The BBC says that one minute of 4K video can take up about 5 GB of storage space. This in turn necessitates greater storage capacity, which is precisely the void that SanDisk is hoping to fill with this new memory card.
While a 512 GB memory card certainly sounds vast and limitless – after all, most people could back up their entire computer hard drives several times over with that much space – it would actually only hold about 30 hours of 4K video. Since films and TV shows are cut together from hours of footage and dozens of different takes, that really is not that much space. Luckily, flash memory technology is improving at a rapid pace, and it is likely that SD memory cards will eventually be able to store as much as 2 TB of data.
So how much does it cost to get SanDisk’s newest product? The 512 GB SD card retails for around $800.
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