16 GB SDHC Cards available this month

[RobinB]

Just found this (http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/07/microdia-launches-16gb-sdhc-card-your-pocketbook-weeps-for-sham/) on Engadget:

http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/2007/05/16gb-sdhc-microdia.jpg

We knew it was only a matter of time before we had 16GB of SDHC goodness staring us down across the internets, just daring us to make the first move, but we just didn't know it would be so soon -- and so expensive. Apparently MICRODIA is prepping a range of SDHC memory to be launched in Japan this month, including a pair of what sound to be the world's first 16GB cards. They're all aimed pretty squarely at performance, with 4 and 8GB Class 4 52x cards; 4, 8 and 16GB Class 4 82x cards; and 4, 8 and 16GB Class 6 160x cards. The latter will cost you dearly, with the Class 6 16GB SDHC pictured above selling for a whoppin' $3,500. When you put it that way, our collection of 4GB SDHC is treating us just fine, thankyouverymuch.

Sums it up pretty well :-)

[M4psycho]

I think to best sum it up: ridiculous price.
Man....

[emjay1]

Wow, haha, so that's about £1,700 for the class 6 160x....
I wonder how much cheaper the slower cards are in comparison...
But at that price for the fastest, I'd expect the class 4 52x to be around £600 still, which is crazy....I may want 16gb sdhc, but not that much!

[Michalaq]

Yeah, that's not even funny.
I got a class 6 8gig for 44x less than that 16gig.
I could have 352gigs of flash memory in 8gb cards for that price...

[andyp]

Sure, but what if you have that 8.1Gb file you just neeeed on your D2...haha.

[R-R]

If anybody wants to leak us a batch so we can be 16G beta testers, I'm in... :P

[Michalaq]

But seriously, how much do you expect the price on a 16gig will drop by the time they are somewhat more widespread? It's not looking optimistic... I was hoping to pay double, maybe triple what I would for an 8gig by next year...
Still, I guess 16 gig CF cards are widely available and not that ridiculously expensive, so SD should follow

[snorreh]

$3,500 ! [shocked]

I think I'll wait until the prices go down to today's SDHC 8GB Class 6 levels, probably in good time before Christmas this year.

[mikey]

Imagine if you lost it

[Dominic]

Sure, but what if you have that 8.1Gb file you just neeeed on your D2...haha.

Then you had better hope the 16gb card isn't using fat32 [thumbsup]

[species]

this might be a little of topic, is 32gb the maxiumum these cards can go up to?, is that the official word?

[emjay1]

this might be a little of topic, is 32gb the maxiumum these cards can go up to?, is that the official word?

Yep, that's the theoretical maximum...

[Schalldämpfer]

Yep, that's the theoretical maximum...

What's the limitation, do you know?

[in_flames]

The 8Gb cards are about ~75$

16Gb can't burst the ~140$ price range

Otherwise take 2x 8Gb cards..

[GSV3MiaC]

Nope, you always expect to pay a premium for the bleeding edge items, however if the 16GB is more than 4-6x the 8GB then someone is definitely taking the £!$$.

[GSV3MiaC]

What's the limitation, do you know?

It's the addressing format, Wikipedia can tell you more than you'd possibly want to know, unless you are a hardware designer (in which case you'd not be asking I guess):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital_card

[species]

I just looked at this link and found this:

"Capacity limit in all SD/MMC formats appears to be 128 GB in LBA mode (28-bit sector address)"

Whatever LBA Mode means, too technical explanation for me there, but i guess it's possible someday SDHC cards will reach 128 GB mark. [thumbsup]

Just imagine a 132 gb D2, nice

[neoxerxes]

Just imagine a 132 gb D2, nice

At the point I imagine we would have all moved on to something else!

[tobbis]

At the point I imagine we would have all moved on to something else!

And imagin the startup time [blink]....16 times longer then with a 8gb[thumbsup]

[mikey]

And imagin the startup time [blink]....16 times longer then with a 8gb[thumbsup]

I would have thought once that data base is built it would be only seconds, unless you took the card out constantly that is. A nice problem to have though[wink]

[Aevum]

ok, lets address the issues one by one,

first, that 16gb with a price which is more of a joke, well, anyone ever heard of that brand before that annuncement ? its a publicity stunt, if you went, put the money on the table and asked for the card, they would probobly stare at you and ask "excuse me sir, are you retarded ?" they just wanted to make a big bang over having the first 16gb card, in 2-3 months expect cards from A-DATA, Lexar, Sandisk and Transcend at around $120-$140,

as for the space issue, normal atapi addressing had a problem, when it was designed, the biggest hard drive was smaller then the smaller SDcard sold today, so they set a limit for physical addressing which seemed fine at the time, is quite un fitting now, i think the limit was 2 or 4gb, manufactureres gut around it by making hard drives report face stats relating sectors, cylinders and heads, untill it was corrected by the introduction of LBA,

now, 99% of storage devices today are LBA compatible, which resolve the physicial addressing issue, unfortunaly, it dosnt fix the logical addressing issue,

up to today, all storage media uses FAT in some way or another, and you have FAT15 (limit 2gb) Fat16(limited to 4gb) and FAT32 (limited to 32GB)
devices with bigger partitions have different solutions for this issue,

the problem comes with licensing, fat15 is basicly public today, so anyone can use it, but fat16 and fat32 require licenses from the owner of the system, in other words, MS, thats why you dont see alot of 4gb SD 1.0 cards, the SD 1.0 spec called for the use of fat15, making 4gb SD cards non standart, therefore compatability is some times hit or miss with them,

now the SDHC (SD 2.0) standart calls on the use of FAT32, meaning that the SD card can have logical addressing for up to 32GB, so SDHC cards beyond 32gb are NOT possible becuase they would break compatability in logical addressing by using a different file system,

[cangel]

I am in Japan right now and the largest card in the stores are 2GB. When I ask about 8 or 16, they say they don't exist. I doubt if they are coming out in Japan.

[TedJ]

They're available in Japan, just not very widely. AFAIK there are only 2 manufacturers who have a 16GB SDHC (one of them is Japanese) and with a price of ~$3000 USD, not many stores are going to be stocking them.

8GB cards should be readily available... are you sure you're asking for SDHC? Standard SD cards (those that conform to the SD spec at least) have a maximum size of 2GB.