Toshiba Announces 32GB Memory Card

By the Betanews Staff | Published August 23, 2007, 11:27 AM

Days after announcing the industry's largest notebook hard drive with a capacity of 320GB, Toshiba says it will ship early next year a 32GB memory card for cameras and digital audio players. In the SDHC format, the card will have a Class 4 rating, the middle level offering 4MB/sec. transfer speeds.

In addition, Toshiba announced a 16GB SDHC card that is due out in October, along with an 8GB microSDHC card for mobile phones and other small devices that will ship in January. Pricing for the new memory cards was not given, but Toshiba will likely make an announcement regarding the 32GB and 8GB cards at CES 2008 early next year.

Comments

View comments by with a score of at least

Dont get to big on the solid state storage. Once those puppies go there is no way anyone can do any data recovery.

Score: 0

|

Generally more reliable than spinning media though. And it's not like it's cheap to recover a crashed HDD, particularly if it needs to be taken apart to recover data ($1k+).

As always, backup is the cheap and easy solution.

Score: 0

|

...offering 4MB/sec. transfer speeds

Yuck. For a memory card that size, it had better have at least 10MBps write speed. I know it's possible. I have a 2GB SD card with 18MBps write speed.

EDIT:
Lets assume you get exactly 32 metric gigabytes (1GB = 1000MB). That would mean it would take nearly 2 and a quarter hours to fill that drive.

32000MB / 4MBps / 60 (seconds) / 60 (minutes) = 2.22 Hours.

Score: 0

|

The class tells you that the card will sustain those speeds throughout the card. I know that several cheap SD cards that will copy 15-20 MB/s sequentially but when they are read random the speeds will vary widely. A class 6 SDHC should have a minimum sustained speed of 6 MB/s. Just because it a class 6 doesn't mean that it can't read faster.

While SDHC cards generally aren't as fast as SD cards I am sure cost is certainly a factor. 32GB of flash memory isn't cheap. Getting 32GB of fast flash memory would be more than what most consumer would be willing or able to pay. Despite that caveat I wish higher speed cards were available for those willing to pay a premium.

Score: 0

|

For the record, I wasn't talking about a "cheap" SD card:

http://www.kingston.com/flash/sdultimate.asp?id=2

I understand that putting more memory in the same small flash memory card is exponentially more expensive, and your last sentence sums up how I feel exactly:

Despite that caveat I wish higher speed cards were available for those willing to pay a premium.

If someone's going to pay a premium for more memory, they're probably willing to pay a premium to have that memory be efficiently usable.

Score: 0

|

What kind of premium? 10 times as much? Because I suspect realistically that's the cost Toshiba would be looking at to do a limited run of these huge capacity cards for a niche market. Not to mention the technology may not even be available to make very high-speed media with large capacities.

It's easy to say that'd you'd pay extra for the next level of technology, but realistically, most people won't and those that will underestimate how much extra it would really cost.

Score: 0

|

I may be going slightly mad, but I thought 32GB was already out.

Score: 0

|

I might be wrong too, but I haven't even seen any 16GB cards available to consumers yet.

EDIT:
*smacks forehead*

It says right in the article the 16GB card is coming in October.

Score: 0

|

I think it's because they announced it that SDHC can support 32gb's. But they haven't actually released it yet. I don't think 16gb is even out yet.

I remember one of my first computers having a 60mb hard drive (yep mb, not gb).

Score: 0

|

Google rolls out real-time search, Near Me Now, extended personalization

Over time, searches from PCs and mobile phones will grow even "more personalized." But what about user privacy and search results that give you "the truth"?

Intel's marriage of CPU and GPU not ready for prime time

Although there will be an Intel component this month that can compute and plot in parallel, Betanews was told today, it won't be based on Project "Larrabee."

An alternative to Research in Motion's enterprise e-mail? There's an app for that

Good Technology today released an iPhone app compatible with its enterprise e-mail solution.

Playing catch-up in 2010: Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and Symbian

Microsoft, RIM, and Nokia are each working on improved mobile operating systems. But could these efforts add up to too little, too late?

Windows fix for TLS security bug still forthcoming, won't be Tuesday

Anyone looking for a fix for last month's discovery of a potentially serious security hole in TLS and SSL may have to wait until everyone is ready to act together.

Not the first, not the last, technology predictions for 2010

Carmi Levy | Wide Angle Zoom: The real truth is probably that what went around in 2009, will come around to haunt us next year.

Google Goggles: Hands on with the Shazam of the Real World

Google today unveiled Goggles, its visual search lab for Android devices that identifies objects by sight.

Microsoft: Windows 7 Family Pack wasn't 'pulled,' it just sold out

If you hurry, you may still be able to find the last Family Pack upgrade editions hanging around retail store shelves, but probably not so much online.

Clever iPhone game returns after being bumped over a name dispute

The game's simple concept and multitude of platforms and puzzles manage to pull off a retro, 8-bit style that's reminiscent of an old Atari game given a modern makeover.

Report: Microsoft to randomize Europe's browser screen choices

The fact that "A" is for "Apple" was apparently at the heart of browser vendor objections to Microsoft's alternative to listing IE first.

Will Nokia's plans further alienate American consumers?

A look at Nokia's plans for the coming years does little to shine up the company's increasingly dull image.