Tech

SanDisk's 1TB SD card aims to solve your storage problems

Video that is 4K and 8K -- along with VR and 360-degree video -- puts a heavy demand on storage. SanDisk's new prototype 1TB SD card aims to remove that roadblock.

Written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Senior Contributing Editor Sept. 20, 2016 at 3:16 a.m. PT

SanDisk's new prototype 1TB SDXC card packs more storage than most high-end laptops in a form-factor that you can balance on your pinky.

A few years ago, it was inconceivable that anyone would want a 1TB storage card for their camera, but with the rise of 4K and 8K capture, as well as 360-degree video and VR, high-end professionals need all the storage they can get their hands on.

SanDisk debuted the world's first 512GB SD card in 2014 (which you can pick up nowadays for under $200), and in just two years, the company has doubled the data density of these cards.

"Showcasing the most advanced imaging technologies is truly exciting for us," said Dinesh Bahal, vice president, product management, Content Solutions Business Unit, Western Digital (the company that now owns SanDisk). "Sixteen years ago we introduced the first SanDisk 64MB SD card and today we are enabling capacities of 1TB. Over the years our goal has remained the same; continue to innovate and set the pace for the imaging industry. The SanDisk 1TB SD card prototype represents another significant achievement as growth of high-resolution content and capacity-intensive applications such as virtual reality, video surveillance and 360 video, are progressing at astounding rates."

But what about reliability? Isn't shooting a terabyte of data onto a single card just asking for trouble?

Not really.

I've been shooting on high-capacity CF and SD cards for years, and the reliability of professional brands such as SanDisk and Lexar (the only two brands I use) are such that I've never had any corruption or hardware issues that have caused me to lose data.