Western Digital's new 4TB SD card is a new record capacity, but you can't get it yet

If you thought a 1TB SD card was insane, Western Digital announced a 4TB Sandisk SD card with 4TB capacity at NAB 2024. Don’t get your card out just yet, because the manufacturer won’t ship the new card until next year.

Actually, Western Digital announced a whole new line of SD cards and external drives but the 4TB SanDisk Extreme PRO SDUC UHS-I memory card clearly stands out from the pack.

All about the Western Digital’s new 4TB SDUC card

To begin with, even WD recognizes the fact that 4TB is an insane capacity for an SD memory card:

Introducing the world’s first-ever 4TB UHS-I SD card to deliver an insane amount of capacity in the same-sized SD form factor. Leveraging the SDUC standard (Secure Digital Ultra Capacity), which enables up to 128TB, the new card is expected to release in 2025 and will be showcased at NAB 2024. Attendees will get a preview of the 4TB SD card’s full capacity and learn more about how it will expand the creative possibilities for cameras and laptops.

Western Digital press release

So, the new card uses the UHS-I interface and it’s Class 10 speed, which means that it will have a minimum transfer rate of 10MB/s. However, because it is also a Class V30 Video Speed card, it is rated for a 30 MB/s minimum sequential write speed. That is on par with 8K video recording, but also exceeds the 4K requirements on today’s market. Also, the card could reach 104MB/s transfer rate in the UHS104 (SDR104) mode.

As Anandtech points out, Western Digital doesn’t mention anything in their press release about the DDR200/DDR208 mode that is already featured for the SanDisk Extreme Pro SDXC 1 TB SD card. That will allow higher transfer rates (170 MB/s) than UHS-I standard through the double data rate signaling technology. However, they have a lot of time to figure that out until the late launch.

Other Western Digital important additions

Western Digital also announced a couple of premium-grade hard drive solutions and their estimated prices:

• 24TB* G-DRIVE^® (U.S. MSRP $699.99) – Ultra-reliable storage supporting USB-C™ (10Gbps) for fast backup.
• 24TB* G-DRIVE PROJECT (U.S. MSRP $929.99) – Backup and save valuable project work. Compatible with Thunderbolt 3™ and USB-C (10Gbps). Also features a PRO-BLADE™ SSD Mag slot for modular SSD performance in sharing and editing across devices.
• 48TB* G-RAID^® MIRROR (U.S. MSRP $1,599.99) – Ships in RAID 1 (Mirroring) to automatically create a duplicate of your working files for data redundancy. Compatible with Thunderbolt 3™ and USB-C (10Gbps). Also features a PRO-BLADE™ SSD Mag slot for modular SSD performance in sharing and editing across devices.
• 96TB* G-RAID SHUTTLE 4 (U.S. MSRP $4,499.99) – Transportable 4-bay hardware RAID solution allows for super-fast access and real-time video editing. This device ships in RAID 5, and supports RAID 0, 1 and 10 configurations.
• 192TB* G-RAID SHUTTLE 8 (U.S. MSRP $7,499.99) – Transportable 8-bay hardware RAID solution for those who need massive storage for consolidated backup, whether on location or in the studio. It supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60 configurations, and provides transfer rates up to 1690MB/s read and 1490MB/s write in default RAID 5.

While these will be great to have, we keep thinking about the long-term reliability of the 4TB SD card. Well, it’s just that: SD cards are not created for long-term storage and unless you buy it for 4K or 8K video recording, a 4TB card would not be such a wise investment. Western Digital didn’t mention anything about the price of the new SD card but a 1 TB SanDisk SD card is now priced at around $140.