SanDisk releases 128GB microSD card | Hacker News Reader

SanDisk releases 128GB microSD card

sandisk.com

83 pointsdavidbarker79 comments

I've always thought that if time traveler was possible, and someone came to the present day from the 1950s, that a microSD card would be one of the best ways to blow their mind. I still feel a bit of awe when I'm holding a fingernail sized piece of plastic that can contain all of Wikipedia with room to spare.

Forget the '50's. It would have blown my mind as a kid. If you told me there were more than 100 movies on something the size of a fingernail. And that they were higher quality than on my VHS tapes.

Without proof I never would have believed someone who even tried to tell me that.

Yep -- a person in the 50s may not have even had enough context to be as blown away by this as someone who knew about hard drives.

My earliest memory of a hard drive capacity -- about 21 years ago -- is 130 MB (although that most certainly wasn't the upper limit). So you could have told me "This card is 1/2000th the size and has 1000 times the capacity."

2,000,000 times the data density! That's doubled almost 21 times!

I remember buying, with my father, a 5mb Corvus hard drive. It was amazingly huge compared to the ~70kbyte floppy drive. I was in awe of how many documents it could hold.

Seeing this is just amazing.

Yeah my first harddrive was a 5 megabyte drive running off the side expansion port of an Amiga 500 -- I was pretty sure there was no way I'd ever fill that drive up when I first got it.

That was an A590. It came with a 20mb XT drive that made an annoying squeaking noise whenever it did a seek operation, but also had a SCSI connector which I eventually hooked a Quantum 100mb drive to.

Mine wasn't an A590, I was too poor to afford that at the time. I had some knock-off third-party unit I bought at the "local" (not really local, but closest one to where I lived) Amiga store (Memory Location in Wellesley, MA).

Worked pretty well, as far as I can remember.

Sure, but you would also have to bring along a phone/tablet to show it off, or laptop/adapter.

Then how would you prove it had that much data? You can fake a sd card right now to show it has a huge amount of data on it.

I can hold up a piece of dust and claim it can hold 20tb, but no one will believe me.

That piece of dust might well hold 20Tb of dead genetic material from whatever created it... consider that a single human cell contains 3.2Gb of data in its DNA.

> a single human cell contains 3.2Gb of data in its DNA

DNA is actually closer to 750MB (2.9 billion base pairs, 2 bits to one DNA sequence, so one byte to four sequences). Of course, a cell has other things going on in it (mitochondrial DNA, etc, so overall you're probably still right!

Mitochondrial DNA is only 17k base pairs. More important is the two main DNA copies per cell. But if you really want impressive numbers look at certain species of amphibians and plants that reach the 100 billion base pair range.

a microSD card would probably impress some guys at IBM, but take an iPhone (and the internet) and you'll blow everyone's mind. Just google maps alone in the palm of your hand is amazing. iPhone (or any hand held computer) plus wikipedia, google maps and of course tumblr for cats and people in the 50's would likely either kill you or start a cult for you. (or in the case of Jesus, both)

'take the internet'? That's quite a lot of stuff you're taking with you, from layer 1 all the way up. You couldn't 'take the internet' even with a giant fleet of trucks.

How about a series of pipes? Will that work?

Unfortunately an iPhone taken back to the 1950s is going to be a local-apps-only affair.

Even showing off the hardware would be hard.

"Lemme show you the awesome pictures I can take with this iPhone, right plug this cable into your computer's USB por.......oh"

How many people in the 1950s could really comprehend what 128 GB is? You'd have to resort to terrible Library of Congresses or Volkswagen full of core memory analogies.

I glanced down at my Nexus 7 last night while walking and realised how futuristic stuff is. It seems so light and handy, and I said that about the previous N7 last year.

In '96, I only had 1GB of storage total in my PC, across several hard drives. I thought that was amazingly huge.

In 96 I upgraded my 200mb internal to 2G. I felt like the Queen of England for a good couple of years with that.

What's great about these microSDs is that you can put them anywhere - cameras, sensor devices whathaveyou. Maybe one day we really will have enough data to understand the world.

There's a funny bit from a comedian named Shane Mauss about time travel that goes:

"... I wish I had a real time machine, I'd go back like 300 years ago, I'd bring some piece of modern technology to really wow them. I'd be like (in futurey sci-fi inflection) 'and this is called a computer!' and they would be all like 'yeah, computer that's neat... say is that time machine you just stepped out of? Because that is far more impressive'"

That bit isn't on Youtube but here he is explaining truck commercials: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKSZsURPFyA

(I think I posted his stuff on another forum you frequent so you've probably seen it but the time machine talk is apt)

My cousin is often profoundly amazed by GB large usb keys. He (We) went through many steps in perception of digital data. I think someone from the 50s would have a hard time realizing what it could mean.

The other thing to consider is that in 60 years from now, would the data on that microSD still be there? Many books from the 1950s are still perfectly readable today (I have several), I also have some floppies from the 80s whose contents are intact, but what about modern high-density NAND flash, which is inherently unstable? Will it have mostly erased itself in a few decades?

The total storage is impressive enough, but what keeps amazing me is that today I toss around 4 gig files like they're nothing. Those are bigger than the entire disk array my medical imaging research lab had when I was a grad student.

Note how they very carefully avoid saying anything about write endurance or data retention... SanDisk had 4-bit MLC NAND almost 5 years ago so maybe they've improved their process, but if the retention and endurance characteristics of current 3-bit MLC is any indication, I'll pass on this --- it's almost certainly going to be 3-bit MLC, if not 4-bit.

They are a few months late from meeting Moore's law. Their 64GB microSD card came out on Sep 18th, 2011.

http://www.slashgear.com/sandisk-releases-64gb-class-6-micro...

Amazing piece of engineering, but I'll be holding out for the 128Gb version of their Cruser Fit as it protrudes less that a standard SD card adapter on my 2011 Air.

Haven't had much luck with microSD cards: I once bricked a 32Gb card after knocking the SD adapter again a chain arm on a train and had a failing 4Gb card get so hot it melt the provided USB adapter.

I cannot comprehend why there are not many more flash drives with the form factor of the Cruzer Fit.

That's why you have to go with a microSD card adapter that doesn't protrude at all. http://theniftyminidrive.com/

I second this - I have a Nifty and it's perfect

I have been playing with RPi's for some months now and I'd be anxious to use an SD card (be it micro or standard size) for reliable additional storage space or backup.

Are SD cards reliable enough for normal usage (excluding RPi's brutal power-off which are often prone to corruption) ?

You might want to give nilfs2 a try, it should be rather well suited to sdcard storage:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=16289

Note that nilfs doesn't do checksumming -- for that you'd have to look at btrfs or zfs. I'm not sure how btrfs is in terms of ram usage, but generally zfs needs lots of ram -- and if you want to get the guarantees it provides for data, you need ecc ram.

Impressive numbers. I'll give it a shot in a few hours on a spare pi and see how it performs. Thank you.

Somewhere I read that cost of manufacturing a 4GB card and a 64GB card are more or less the same. Is it true? Why then is there a colossal difference between their prices?

It's possible that the 4Gb cards are 64Gb cards where 93% of it doesn't work.

Or does work and is just disabled. I don't know about high end cards but it's hard to believe Sandisk would have a completely separate manufacturing process for 2GB and 4GB cards when they're both sold at less than $10 each.

I doubt they would willingly downgrade a working 64GB to a 4GB (and lose all the profit they could have made). That's just not a sane business practice in the flash industry.

Keep in mind, even the major brands are re-branding flash they buy from other manufacturers. So e.g. maybe Sandisk manufactures the high-end 64GB cards themselves using an advanced process, but they purchase the 4GB cards from some shitty manufacturer using a decade-old process.

> I doubt they would willingly downgrade a working 64GB to a 4GB (and lose all the profit they could have made). That's just not a sane business practice in the flash industry.

It doesn't work like that. The model your parent comment is discussing goes like this:

1. Sandisk decides how much to charge for 64GB cards.

2. That price creates a certain level of demand for 64GB cards.

3. Sandisk manufactures many, many more 64GB cards than it can sell at the price it established in step (1).

4. Sandisk downgrades the surplus cards to lower capacity so it can still sell them without eating into 64GB card profits.

What you appear to be missing is that if you have extra 64GB cards, you can't necessarily sell them without lowering the price of 64GB cards across the board, leaving you having sold more cards for less money. So that "profit they could have made" that you refer to is illusory.

It doesnt work like that either. Sandisk has a chip FAB. They can make whatever capacity chips they like. If by a freak accident they make more than they can sell (LOL, wont happen, flash market is constantly under supplied) they can just sell it to third parties (Kingston buys from them among many others).

NO ONE disables good flash memory without reason.

> Sandisk has a chip FAB. They can make whatever capacity chips they like.

But if production costs are (even almost) the same for a 4GB card and 64GB card, why would you ever produce a 4GB card? A 64GB card can be sold as 1 through 64GB -- rather than collect dust as a 64GB card if there is higher demand for cheaper cards.

Now, I'm not certain that prices are similar, but it seems reasonable that if you already have quality control and precision enough to make 64 GB cards, it would be cheaper to just make one type of card, than different types.

Yes, that sounds a lot smarter than cutting it to size.

right?

> If by a freak accident they make more than they can sell (LOL, wont happen, flash market is constantly under supplied)

If this were true, it would be hard to buy SD cards. But it isn't?

SD cards is only fraction of the flash market. Apple alone was buying 1/4 of the worlds supply in 2007.

So? They're still part of it. If flash is being undersupplied, it should all be hard to get. That's what undersupply is.

And this is why SSD prices stopped falling. http://stsdb.com/uploads/pages/SDD_SSD-price-b.jpg

Now you see undersupply?

I don't know. As far as I can tell, it's common to sell downgraded parts at lower price points, just to be able to compete at those price points as well. In theory they could've just dropped the price for 64GB cards, and killed all cards with less capacity -- that would at least have made more (apparent to consumers) sense than sell all cards at the same (cost+margin) price.

I speculate that as manufacturing processes have gotten better, several segments of the industry simply continue to follow the old pattern of lower performance/lower price (GBs of flash, frequency of processors) from processes that did produce "quantifiable" low yields (eg: disabled core that didn't pass q/a, unreliable flash etc).

As for re-enabling flash on lower capacity cards, I remember seeing a reference to some people being able to flash/reprogram/reconfigure SSD drives for higher capacity -- not sure about sdcards. Also not sure if that was just to alter the reported capacity, or actually enabled more flash on the drive -- I can't find the article right now.

Given stuff like:

http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3554

It doesn't seem too far fetched that it's possible.

This is definitely true. Margins on flash are so thin nowadays you gotta make money on every card.

I didn't mean that 93% was deliberately disabled, I meant that 93% of the card failed QA and so it was sold as a 4Gb card. This is not unlike 1 core CPU chips being made as multi-core ones where the other cores failed to work.

It could also have to do with flash type and process size: the smaller one could be an older generation with lower density, the bigger one a newer generation higher density flash. The cost mostly depends on the die size (in square mm).

That's a nice boost for GoPro right before its IPO. Now their cameras get even more recording time.

Save for the battery that is.

Depending on the application you can run plugged in. This would be great for long time lapses and the like.

microSD cards are a pain to handle though, unless you have tweezers for hands. CF cards all the way!

With a 128GB card, you might not have to do much handling. Just put it in and you have as much memory as the biggest iPad.

I heard that KitKat isn't too friendly towards app usage of external media. With that and the lack of card slots for newer smartphones, what the biggest usage today of such media?

If you're a photographer, that card is likely to be coming out of your camera every time you finish a shoot. The camera certainly isn't going to get the data off the card at the full 90MB/s over USB 2.0.

SD card gets the format right for me: I find SIMs to be the limit of my manual dexterity. The microSD format is just a data loss disaster waiting for a place to happen.

Solution: SD card for caching, but transfer off of cameras using 802.11ac.

The just-released Galaxy S 5 has a MicroSD slot. So not all Android phones have removed SD storage.

Dont worry, Google just removed full SD access for apps in kitkat :) so that slot is great for storing cat videos you record, and not much else.

>lack of card slots for newer smartphones

My Galaxy S4 uses microSD.

Use cases? Phones, tablets, GPSes, MP3/portable video players...?

Perfect for MacBook Airs with 64/128GB SSD's, since the 13" model has an SD card slot

Also complimentary for Gigabyte U2442s with 128gb and their xHDDs, since 14" Gigabytes have dual air venting systems with GPUs able to play Titanfall decently.

The SD adapter sits out way too far to not accidentally knock the card if you leave it in permanently.

I switched to using these: http://www.sandisk.com.au/products/usb/drives/cruzer-fit/ and hopefully a 128Gb version is not far away.

That's where the Nifty Minidrive comes in. You can use a MicroSD card in the adapter to fit in a SD card slot flush.

Yes, the size is now big enough to consider them as a storage/secondary hard drive for ultrabooks.

How would read/write speeds compare to, say, a USB3 external drive ?

You don't need a card slot. If your device supports USB-OTG you can get one of these: http://www.meenova.com/st/p/m3r.html

Mine works great with my Nexus 7 (no root required thanks to Nexus Media Importer).

That seems like a great way to break the already weak connector on the 2012 N7.

I know there are alternatives but nothing can match the integration of an internal MicroSD slot, even if it's inconveniently located behind a battery.

CF cards are falling out of favor with many people because if you screw up and break one of the pins on the CF receptacle, your device is probably hosed (a big problem for a camera person or musician) and will certainly require an expensive repair. SD cards are fiddly, I agree, but on the upside there seems to be a lower likelihood of breakage.

EDIT: of course this is about MicroSD, I agree those are fiddly. But damn impressive all the same.

Professional cameras still use CF though.

I recently got a Cumulus drive for my Oric-1/Atmos collection. The Oric-1 is an ancient 8-bit computer from the 80's with 48k RAM (64k if you're tricky..) .. and now with the Cumulus .. it has an 8-gigabyte storage system.

Yes, a 48k machine: with 8gigs of storage. WTF, amiright? :P its hell fun having such a system, crammed with everything .. and still trying to figure out what to do with it. 8-bit Wikipedia dump on the horizon!

Many of the cheap MP3/MP4 players have an 8-bit CPU (Z80, 8051, or similar vintage) with a few hundred K of (banked) RAM and several G of flash, so it's not that weird of a configuration.

So why is my 1GIG ssd drive not the size of 8 of these microSD cards? In fact I could easily fit 16 of these cards in USB stick. Someone MAKE IT SO! :D

I think it's mainly a matter of pin count - SATA SSDs want to be able to access the NAND devices independently in order to stripe accesses. That's how they're able to offer such high sequential speeds. So a typical SSD will include 4-8 packages containing only a few NAND dies each, rather than one or two with 8 dies each.

We also aren't that far off with 1TB mSATA (about 1x2 inches) drives available today. 2.5" drives are obviously much bigger than 8 microSD cards because the form factor was designed for spinning platters.

There already is a 1TB mSATA http://www.anandtech.com/show/7594/samsung-ssd-840-evo-msata...

But that sacrifices a lot, by using TLC (since 128Gb MLC isn't available yet), and by stacking stacking 16 dies per package, and by having less spare area than most drives. The end result is significantly lower performance and longevity than other mSATA drives, and it's currently got a 25% premium over the 2.5" counterpart.

128GB / (15mm × 11mm × 1mm) ~= 800GB per cubic centimeter.

Granted, that doesn't include any volume for the equipment needed to address or power all that memory, but it's pretty an impressive information density.

Nothing compared to the upper bounds on what can be stored in that volume, but the technology has come far in 50 years.

I've always wondered why is it we never see something like a 96GB SD card, but always double? When you're working at that size, it would seem logical to me to go from 64GB to 96GB, than to 128GB. Anyone know the answer? I suspect it's to do with some addressing mechanism.

Upon reading this, I immediately went to Bestbuy and Amazon (both .com and .ca, just for kicks) only to not find the product that "is available worldwide". Sadness.

That's as much as I have on my retina.

Damn, stores 125 apps. I've got 126 :/

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