Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: pretec, sd, sdxc, memory | Themes: Digital Cameras
During CES, the Secure Digital Association announced a new storage standard that would allow for as much as 2 TB of data to be stored on a single memory card. Called SDXC, or Secure Digital "Xtreme" Capacity, the cards would give compatible devices unprecedented amounts of truly mobile storage.
Fast forward to the present, and Pretec is using CeBIT to announce the world’s first SDXC memory card.
The initial offering from Pretec will be a 32 GB SDXC card, but the company promises that a 64 GB version will be available in the coming months. This new SDXC card boasts a transfer speed of 50 MB/sec., blazing past older SD and SDHC cards. While 32 GB of storage and 50MB/sec. transfer speeds are impressive, 32 GB is already available with SDHC (High Capacity) cards. Plus, the 50MB/sec. speed is far below the 300MB/sec. that the SDA said was possible with this new standard.
SDXC is off to a good start, but there is still a lot of work to be done. The new cards, while offering more storage and faster transfers, will not work with most SD/SDHC compatible devices. The new SDXC cards use the exFAT file storage system, while older SD and SDHC cards use the original FAT32 system, meaning SDXC cards can only be used in SDXC compatible devices. Also, while Pretec says its new cards will be available in 2009, concrete ship dates and pricing are nowhere to be seen.
According to the Pretec press release, SDXC cards are 100 percent incompatible with SD and SDHC compatible devices. But if one decided to reformat an SDXC card using the older FAT32 file system, it may yet work with older devices.
We called up the SD Association and spoke with Kevin Schader, the SDA's Director of Communications he clarified that while the newer cards could work with older cameras and phones, the results of reformatting are very unpredictable. "The behavior of an altered card could vary depending on the device the card is used in," said Schader. "Possible outcomes include the card not being recognized at all, only being recognized up to a certain capacity point, or it may even recognize the entire card. The bottom line here is that the behavior is unpredictable." While the results may be up in the air, having up to 2 TB of storage for your camera or PMP without shelling out cash for a new one is an exciting prospect. Just make sure you back up those photos before trying anything!
SDXC isn't the only thing Pretec is showing off at CeBIT this year. The company also unveiled a new CompactFlash card, which can transfer data up to four times faster than its predecessors. The "666x" CF cards, which will be available in sizes ranging from 4 GB to 64 GB, have a transfer speed of 100 MB/sec., which is coming close to the maximum speed of the current CompactFlash standard. Pretec said its 666x cards would likely be the last series based on the current CF specification. However, a new standard called CFast is waiting in the wings, which can allow for transfer speeds up to 375 MB/sec.
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awesome simply awesome!
-_- i dont think this will be consumer price friendly up until maybe 2012, when ssd's are already going 100998098 TB/s
Can vista or windows 7 format that exFat system ? or what's one do if the card gets corrupted? I know my car radio has a habit of corrupting hte file system of the usb sticks I throw at it (after a month or so it'll have created some filesystem errors and lose access to certain files) .... so I regularily reformat the two sticks I use for my car. I replace music often anyway.
vista sp2 and windows 7 allow exfat formats.
I read this on www.Dpreview.com, a photography website. There isn't a large difference from 133X to a UDMA 300X card. I have a 266X for my DSLR and a 133X would have worked the same when shooting RAW+JPEG. Higher speed is always welcome, but it will be a long time before the devices actually utilize the extra throughput of these cards.
I read this on www.Dpreview.com, a photography website. There isn't a large difference from 133X to a UDMA 300X card. I have a 266X for my DSLR and a 133X would have worked the same when shooting RAW+JPEG. Higher speed is always welcome, but it will be a long time before the devices actually utilize the extra throughput of these cards.
Really? I find speed makes a huge difference. I admittedly don't use memory cards professionally, but at least with the micro sd cards I use in my phones I can feel a huge difference in how much or little symbian lags ... so at least in that particular place it'll make a difference if one day it can be used on a via/ion based phone
"375 MB/sec. SD Cards Coming Your Way"
Try not lying in your titles to get readers attention. There is no mention of sd cards at 375 mb/sec only compact flash which is a totally different storage format (maybe you dont know that I guess)
"375 MB/sec. SD Cards Coming Your Way"Try not lying in your titles to get readers attention. There is no mention of sd cards at 375 mb/sec only compact flash which is a totally different storage format (maybe you dont know that I guess)
Should be "300 MB/s SD Cards, 375 MB/s CF Cards Coming Your Way"
"375 MB/sec. SD Cards Coming Your Way"Try not lying in your titles to get readers attention. There is no mention of sd cards at 375 mb/sec only compact flash which is a totally different storage format (maybe you dont know that I guess)
Should be "300 MB/s SD Cards, 375 MB/s CF Cards Coming Your Way"
It should probably also specify SDXC instead of regular SD.
I know the difference between SD and SDHC is a tough one to explain to people. I have yet to meet someone who knows the difference when SD cards come up in conversation. People don't know that anything above 2GB is NOT a standard SD card, and that devices that only understand SD cards will not read SDHC cards. However, because they look the same, and both say SD, people tend to buy SDHC cards (more capacity) that they end up not being able to use.
"The new SDXC cards use the exFAT file storage system, while older SD and SDHC cards use the original FAT32 system, meaning SDXC cards can only be used in SDXC compatible devices."
FAT32 can be used for drives/partitions up to 2TB. The 32GB limit is purposely build in by m$, as xpire will refuse to format partitions above that limit, and vi$hta can't format FAT32 at all.
exFAT, actually FAT64, is imposed by m$, because it secured patents for it, and is seen as a mean to milk everyone who'll ever use it.
Also, it shares the same poor design with the rest of the FAT family, making it a very bad choice for a FS with a complex/deep hierarchical structure, which would be inevitable for large drives with a lot of small files. If only the storage of a relatively small number of large files is needed, FAT32 can still be used and read by almost every device.
As a flash memory drive can be partitioned and formatted similarly to any HDD, any appropriate FS can be used.
"SDXC cards are 100 percent incompatible with SD and SDHC compatible devices. But if one decided to reformat an SDXC card using the older FAT32 file system, it may yet work with older devices."
SDHC was incompatible with SD only devices, because of the low level addressing, not of the FS with which it was formatted. Probably it's the same with SDXC, but because the SD Association is "members only", we have to limit ourselves to the information made available by it's marketing droids.
Also the 32GB limit of SDHC was artificially imposed, the adressing scheme supporting up to 2TB.
I, for one, will not be buying any product with 666 in the name.
Megabytes per second ?! or Megabits.
It's OK. Hopefully the 777x speed cards come out soon after :-)