Western Digital announces the world's first 4TB SD card, the 4TB SanDisk Extreme PRO SDUC UHS-I memory card

Western Digital has announced the release of the 4TB SanDisk Extreme PRO SDUC UHS-I Memory Card, a 4TB SD card from its flash memory product brand

https://www.westerndigital.com/en-jp/company/newsroom/press-releases/2024/2024-04-11-western-digital-showcases-new-super-speeds-and-massive-capacities-at-nab-2024

Western Digital preps 4TB SD cards for 2025 — SDUC cards big enough to tackle 8K video | Tom's Hardware
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/microsd-cards/western-digital-preps-4tb-sd-cards-for-2025-sduc-cards-big-enough-to-tackle-8k-video

Western Digital Previews 4 TB SD Card: World's Highest-Capacity
https://www.anandtech.com/show/21349/western-digital-rollsout-4-tb-sd-card-worlds-highestcapacity

Western Digital announced several new products at the NAB Show 2024, the largest broadcasting industry event held in Las Vegas, USA from April 13 to 17, 2024. SanDisk brand SD cards with higher speeds and larger capacities that support higher resolutions and frame rates have been announced.

◆4TB SanDisk Extreme PRO SDUC UHS-I Memory Card
The new product announced by Western Digital that has attracted the most attention is the 4TB SanDisk Extreme PRO SDUC UHS-I memory card, the first product in history to achieve an astounding capacity of 4TB in an SD card form factor. It supports the SDUC (Secure Digital Ultra Capacity) expansion specification and is scheduled to be released in 2025.

SDXC, which is widely used as an expansion specification for SD cards, has a maximum capacity of 2TB, so this standard does not allow for a 4TB SD card. Western Digital therefore adopted the SDUC standard, which has a maximum capacity of 128TB.

Regarding the SD card, technology media AnandTech wrote, 'It is UHS-I compatible and class 10 compliant, so when operating at UHS104 (SDR104), it will support a data transfer speed of at least 10MB/s and a maximum of 104MB/s.' In addition, they pointed out that 'considering the relatively distant release date of 2025, Western Digital may use the upcoming BiCS 9 NAND for the SD card.'

In addition, AnandTech points out that although it is not mentioned in Western Digital's press release, future SD cards from the company will not support DDR200/DDR208 mode. Current Western Digital SD cards support DDR200/DDR208 mode, which allows data transfer speeds of up to 170MB/s, but it appears that support for this mode has been discontinued due to compatibility issues.

The selling price has not been disclosed.

◆SanDisk SD Express (128GB/256GB)
Compared to Western Digital's fastest SD UHS-I card at the time of writing, this card achieves up to 4.4 times the transfer speed. It is the perfect SD card for data-intensive workflows and high-performance cameras, and is also backward compatible.

◆SanDisk microSD Express (128GB/256GB)
Up to 4.4x faster transfer speeds than Western Digital's fastest microSD UHS-I card at the time of writing, providing unmatched speed, storage and performance for professionals with data-intensive workflows. This microSD card is also backwards compatible.

SanDisk SD Express and SanDisk microSD Express have data transfer speeds of up to 880MB/s for reads and up to 650MB/s for writes, which puts them somewhere between SATA SSDs and early NVMe Gen 3 SSDs. However, their capacity is limited to a maximum of 256GB. Tom's Hardware writes, 'The improvement in SD card transfer speeds is very impressive, and if costs get low enough, the future of next-generation portable game consoles such as the Nintendo Switch 2 and Steam Deck 2 will be brighter. With many games requiring SSDs due to their large capacity and SSDs being considered superior in workloads, the continued improvement in SD card transfer speeds is a good sign for the future.'

◆2TB SanDisk Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I Memory Card
The first 2TB UHS-I SDXC card on the market, its large storage capacity allows you to store more high-resolution images and record more 4K UHD videos on a single card.

◆2TB SanDisk Extreme PRO microSDXC UHS-I Memory Card
Western Digital's first and fastest 2TB UHS-I microSD card. Available in summer 2024 at the Western Digital online store and select retailers.

The world's first 2TB microSD card was released in January 2024, so while the 2TB SanDisk Extreme PRO microSDXC UHS-I memory card is not the first 2TB microSD card in history, it is Western Digital's first. Also, because the 2TB SanDisk Extreme PRO microSDXC UHS-I memory card is UHS-I compatible, it should be one of the fastest microSD cards in the world, technology media Tom's Hardware points out.