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posted by martyb on Friday May 17 2019, @02:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the takes-minimum-of-4.6-hours-to-fill-it dept.

CNet:

SanDisk is letting you put 1TB of data on a card the size of a fingernail.

The company's massive-but-minute Extreme microSD UHS-I Card is now available for $450, months after its reveal at Mobile World Congress.

The product page, reported earlier by Tom's Guide, notes read speeds up to 90MB/s and write speeds up to 60MB/s, which is a little slower than the world's fastest flash memory option that SanDisk promised at MWC.

Now you can lose even more data in the washing machine or in the detritus in the bottom of your attache.


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  • (Score: 2, Disagree) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 17 2019, @02:46PM (23 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 17 2019, @02:46PM (#844718)

    I finally got a couple of phones that accept microSD memory expansion, but now the phones themselves come with 64GB and only cost ~$140, outright unlocked no contract.

    I expanded a 32GB phone with a 128GB microSD card, now I can carry our entire music and photo collection around in my phone, plus a few dozen movies (but, why?)

    The 64GB phone accepts memory expansion up to 256GB, but, again, why?

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday May 17 2019, @02:52PM (4 children)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 17 2019, @02:52PM (#844719) Journal

    The uses for storage are so wide that I literally don't understand the point you're making when you say "But why?"

    The list of reasons that crop up immediately in my head is too long to bother typing out.

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 17 2019, @03:06PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 17 2019, @03:06PM (#844726)

      There are over ten quadrillion vigintillion atoms in the universe. But why?

      SanDisk for all your data storage needs

      • (Score: 5, Funny) by fustakrakich on Friday May 17 2019, @04:16PM

        by fustakrakich (6150) on Friday May 17 2019, @04:16PM (#844759) Journal

        There are over ten quadrillion vigintillion atoms in the universe.

        That doesn't sound like much. You sure you counted them all?

        --
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      • (Score: 2) by Bot on Friday May 17 2019, @08:47PM (1 child)

        by Bot (3902) on Friday May 17 2019, @08:47PM (#844831) Journal

        Your mom.

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        • (Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Friday May 17 2019, @11:02PM

          by bob_super (1357) on Friday May 17 2019, @11:02PM (#844869)

          It is an interesting information theory paradox, that something which is 80% H2O just doesn't compress well.

  • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 17 2019, @03:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 17 2019, @03:06PM (#844725)

    You do know that MicroSD cards are used for more than toy cell phones, right?

    You didn't? Of course, you only know what cell phone salesmen want you to know. Go back to your cell-phone oriented universe and cell phone your cell phone with cell phone because cell phone while cell phone.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 17 2019, @03:18PM (4 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday May 17 2019, @03:18PM (#844732) Journal

    It's probably arbitrary, and in some cases might be a lie, as in they say the maximum is 256 GB (which might have been the largest available at the time the instruction manual was written) but it could accept larger.

    Ideally, any device that can accept microSDXC cards could be expanded by 32 GB cards all the way up to 2 TB. I like that Nintendo came right out and said you could expand the Nintendo Switch with a 2 TB card. But on the other you have something like the Samsung Galaxy S9 that can supposedly only take up to 400 GB, i.e. the card SanDisk announced in 2017 [soylentnews.org]. WTF? Maybe it is a lie but it has to be tested case by case.

    BTW, the online deal clickbait on the tech sites says the 400 GB card is around $56. That's much closer to $0.10/GB than this 1 TB card.

    Hundreds of gigabytes or terabytes of storage on a phone could be useful if you can treat it as a dockable portable desktop or just external storage for a PC. Future cards will have the Express mode [soylentnews.org] that should make them theoretically faster than SATA SSDs.

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    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 17 2019, @03:33PM (2 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 17 2019, @03:33PM (#844743)

      if you can treat it as a dockable portable desktop or just external storage for a PC

      Yes, of course, and if you can get your hands on hot SIMs you can also run an awesome file sharing node...

      Have you ever tried the "dockable portable desktop" thing with phones? If you're O.K. with an Android desktop, then, sure...

      External storage for a PC? Why not plug the card/SSD into the PC directly?

      Sure, there's tons of uses for big storage, but as mere consumers it would seem that "backed up" movies are about the only thing that starts to pass 100GB of storage need. I suppose if you VLOG your whole life, that's a special case that might use a bit more, but do you really need, or even want, to carry the last 2000 hours of VLOG with you in portable mode? The dashcam record from hell? Can you imagine your potential liability if you stored 1TB of driving footage, discoverable at basically any time?

      I think these microSD cards are very cool, but... when you start naming off TB+ storage applications, the need for portability pretty quickly falls away. Data storage on deep space missions? Sure, that's awesome, locate redundant cards at extreme opposite ends of the craft and shield the bejesus out of them.

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      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 17 2019, @04:09PM (1 child)

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday May 17 2019, @04:09PM (#844756) Journal

        Have you ever tried the "dockable portable desktop" thing with phones? If you're O.K. with an Android desktop, then, sure...

        Laugh at it for now, but it's just inevitable. We have faster storage in phones these days, faster microSD Express mode, 12 GB of RAM, etc.

        It doesn't have to be Android. The Ubuntu Edge [wikipedia.org] was proposed way back in 2013 and got a lot of backers (just not the $32 million they were looking for). Pine and other companies prove that people will buy Linux products. With a sufficiently beefed up Linux phone, the Ubuntu Edge dream could be realized.

        If the phones aren't fast enough despite being more powerful than previous supercomputers and desktop systems, then we have a software problem.

        Here's an idea I just thought of: use a phone to stream the Google Stadia streaming game service to a dumb monitor.

        External storage for a PC? Why not plug the card/SSD into the PC directly?

        A lot more people have a phone on their person 24/7 than an external storage brick.

        Having the tiny microSD card in the phone prevents you from losing it *achoo*.

        mere consumers it would seem that "backed up" movies are about the only thing that starts to pass 100GB of storage need. I suppose if you VLOG your whole life, that's a special case that might use a bit more, but do you really need, or even want, to carry the last 2000 hours of VLOG with you in portable mode?

        Mere consumers can always settle for less. Pushing the envelope is still valuable.

        If you do want to fill up that storage quickly, 4K recording or VR/VR180 might be able to do it (drones, GoPros, and VR cams might be better than phones for this). 4K resolution is kind of mainstream nowadays, but VR video isn't just yet. The latter should have insanely high storage requirements, so bring on the 128 TB microSD cards.

        I think these microSD cards are very cool, but... when you start naming off TB+ storage applications, the need for portability pretty quickly falls away.

        If you build it, they will come. If we have absurdly high capacity microSD storage at reasonable prices, people will figure out what to do with it. $450 for 1 TB is not cheap, but it will fall to $100-$150 relatively quickly.

        Given the trend towards smaller and cheaper (total cost and launch cost) satellites, I'm sure we'll see someone try to stuff a CubeSat with microSD cards.

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        • (Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday May 18 2019, @01:43AM

          by anubi (2828) on Saturday May 18 2019, @01:43AM (#844899) Journal

          I run an FTP server (FTP Server Pro) on my phone, along with 128GB TF card.

          I also run that old Ipswitch FTP client on the PC side... WSFTPLE 6 , iirc.

          So I backup all of my critical work files to my phone, just to make damned sure I can regenerate my environment should I have to.

          I even have "WiFi Access Point" also loaded on all my phones, so that in the event I have go solo, I can establish a local network. Its not fast, but for me, it works good enough.

          I am still leery of "cloud" stuff after "Plays For Sure" set a new level of expectations of commercial "business grade" software. I am not an executive who has stacks of "not my problem" cards to play. If it screws up, I take the hit personally. And it would cause me great grief to lose what I spent years of my life creating. For many executive types, such a loss is nothing more than reports at the conference table, with no impact whatsoever personally.

          I welcome these tiny TF cards as local data backup in my personal possession.

          --
          "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday May 17 2019, @05:18PM

      by JNCF (4317) on Friday May 17 2019, @05:18PM (#844783) Journal

      the 400 GB card is around $56.

      It always blows me away when I look at the $CURRENT_YEAR prices of storage. I paid this much for a half gig flash drive in ~2006.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 17 2019, @04:26PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 17 2019, @04:26PM (#844765)
    Just because YOU personally can't find a use for it, doesn't mean no one else can. Maybe I want to record some pr0n in 4K. Maybe I'm doing a nude photoshoot and want some high quality raws. Maybe 128GB is good enough for you, but it's definitely not good enough for everyone. The world does not revolve around you.
    • (Score: 3, Funny) by JNCF on Friday May 17 2019, @05:36PM (1 child)

      by JNCF (4317) on Friday May 17 2019, @05:36PM (#844788) Journal

      640K ought to be enough for anybody.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 17 2019, @11:29PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 17 2019, @11:29PM (#844878)

        Especially if you're talking nudes of SN posters. In fact I think 64K is probably excessive.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by krishnoid on Friday May 17 2019, @07:04PM (1 child)

    by krishnoid (1156) on Friday May 17 2019, @07:04PM (#844813)

    It likely accepts and can address up to the 2TB MicroSDXC standard's limit, they just tested it with the 256Gb card at the time.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 17 2019, @08:52PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 17 2019, @08:52PM (#844833)

      When my wife fills up her 64GB internal memory with photos and videos, I'll install the 128GB expansion card - and that should last until long after the phone dies from droppage...

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  • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday May 17 2019, @08:40PM (4 children)

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Friday May 17 2019, @08:40PM (#844827)

    640k out to be enough for everybody

    --
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    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 17 2019, @08:47PM (3 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 17 2019, @08:47PM (#844830)

      640k out to be enough for everybody

      If all you're doing are text documents, no graphics, no multimedia - that's actually pretty true, for 95% of everybody, at least.

      In 1987 I was doing spreadsheets for FDOT in Lotus 1-2-3 that were so big they were blowing out the 640K limit - had to make multiple files and chain their summary results together with some godforsaken script.

      By 1992, I was writing code using the PharLap 32 bit DOS extender, and that pretty much covered our real-world needs for some time.

      In 2005, I bought an AMD64 based PC and started doing 30"x24" 360dpi full color artwork, that did kind of blow out the 32 bit limit, by a little bit at least.

      But, for 95+% of users, yeah.

      --
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      • (Score: 1) by ShadowSystems on Saturday May 18 2019, @07:29AM (2 children)

        by ShadowSystems (6185) <ShadowSystemsNO@SPAMGmail.com> on Saturday May 18 2019, @07:29AM (#844960)

        640Kb isn't enough for plain text files, I can assure you.
        I've got over 110Mb worth of plain text files dedicated to D&D 3.5Ed in one directory alone.
        There's nearly 750Mb of SR4 files in another.
        Those aren't PDF, pictures, nor anything *but* plain text files.
        And that's just what's on my primary drive, the Archive drive has so much more it makes me heave a happy sigh of contentment.
        I could *very easily* fill a 1Tb card with my Archive data.
        In fact I'd need a few of those cards to back it all up.
        So 640Kb might be enough for some folks, but for anyone that requires plain text files to get stuff done, there are *individual text files* that shatter that limit like a Ming vase at ground zero of a planet killer meteore strike.
        =-j

        I just wish I had the money to afford such a card.
        I'd put one in my FeaturePhone, my audio book player, one in the computer dedicated to "Ready Boost", one in the MP3 player, one in my ear canal filled with copies of English-to-$Language translation dictionaries for use as a BabelFish, one in my mother's cars' SatNav for storing maps, another in my StepDad's trucks' SatNav for the same reason, one in her phone, one in his, one in the dash cameras, one in the security cameras around the property, on...
        I'd find ways to use them all!
        Now shut up & take my money!
        =-D

        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 18 2019, @12:49PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday May 18 2019, @12:49PM (#844995)

          To be fair: the 640KB "quote" didn't refer to disk storage, but to RAM.

          Sure, you've got MB worth of text files offline (which could be put in a microSD card today), but it's hard to assert that you "need" to look at 640 pages of text in RAM... even a 100 page document is probably "enough" for a chapter, and if you are writing a book, just store your chapters separately.

          One of my favorite documentation anecdotes came from the nuclear sub program, where the documents required to create the sub outweighed the sub itself. Not some little attack sub, one of the big boomers. That's a great case for electronic documentation, and storing the documents in a hyperlinked wiki structure. Now, if a page of paper is roughly 1KB of text, and weighs roughly 0.16 ounces, and an Ohio class submarine weighs 16500 long tons, that's roughly 3.7 billion pages of paper, or 3.7TB of text - at a minimum - considering much of the documentation contained technical drawings which are more information dense than text, 10TB would not be an unreasonable guess at the documentation storage requirements to create the first Ohio class submarine.

          But, even though the whole package is 10TB, can anyone really "grok" more than 640KB of information at a time from a screen? Of course they can, a single 1920x1080 color image is 8MB raw, but text, maybe not so much.

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        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 18 2019, @12:54PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday May 18 2019, @12:54PM (#844997)

          my audio book player

          Think about that one for a minute: how long does 1TB of audio-book play? Do you have that much lifetime remaining? 25MB per hour, 1TB is about 7 years at 16 hours per day, if you listen to audiobooks at a rate of 2 hours per day that's closer to 56 years.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Pslytely Psycho on Saturday May 18 2019, @03:28AM (1 child)

    by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Saturday May 18 2019, @03:28AM (#844924)

    Porn?
    Pictures of grandkids.
    Porn.
    Pictures of food, cars, people.
    Porn.
    Pictures of family, friends.
    Porn.
    Pictures of events.
    Porn.
    Porn.

    --
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    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @03:48PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18 2019, @03:48PM (#845029)

      I hope you keep those in separate folders.