SanDisk announces world’s first 8TB SD and 4TB microSD cards

SanDisk has produced the world’s first 8-terabyte SD card and the world’s first 4-TB microSD card. SanDisk’s parent company, Western Digital, didn’t reveal many details about the two cards in its press release — only that the 8-TB SD card will be a UHS-I card, so it won’t break any speed records. There’s no word on pricing or availability.

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However, the card will be labeled SDUC. This is a new SD class exclusively for cards with a capacity of over 2 TB. That sounds impressive, but the reality might be more inconvenient. SDUC cards can only be used in devices that specifically support SDUC memory cards, so you can’t put an SDUC card in any old camera with an SD slot.

That’s assuming you can get an SDUC card in the first place, though. Right now, it’s almost impossible to find even 2TB SDXC cards, and just this April SanDisk announced it was working on 4TB SD cards, which the company said could launch sometime in 2025. With that in mind, it could well be a few years before an 8TB SD card is widely available.

Then there’s the question of whether anyone really needs that much data capacity on a single SD card. SD is no longer the format of choice for high-performance cameras, as CFexpress has now far surpassed it in read and write speeds. That SanDisk’s 8TB SD card is UHS-I further limits its practical use, making it practical only for mid-range cameras that max out at high-bitrate 1080p video, which itself doesn’t require an 8-terabyte card.