sdxc

Toshiba has announced new SDXC and SDHC cards that support the UHS-1 high-speed interface--and the new Exceria brand name to go along with them.

The Exceria name is meant "to reflect a combination of 'excellent' and 'experience,'" Toshiba said in a statement this week, but I wouldn't have guessed that without being told. Too bad Sony got there first with Xperia.

The new cards come in three varieties. At the top of the heap are models that will arrive in July with read speeds of 95MBps and write speeds of 90MBps; they'll come in 8GB, 16GB, … Read more

It's flash card season at CES (especially given the shutterbug boost by the conjoined Photo Marketing Association show), and SanDisk has a contribution with high-capacity mid-range SDXC cards.

The two SanDisk Extreme models, 64GB and 128GB, can transfer data at 45MBps. That's less than half the speed of the company's top-end Extreme Pro line of SD cards at 95MBps, but it should be good enough for many photographers and videographers.

The high capacity comes with a price premium--prices for the cards are $200 and $400--but could be useful for those shooting lots of video or traveling away … Read more

Lexar announced a gaggle of new SD memory cards at CES today, with 400X and 600X data-transfer speeds to keep up with professionals' needs higher resolution videos and photos.

The SDHC and SDXC cards use the UHS-I interface for faster transfer speeds (SDXC is a newer version of the SD standard that extends to higher memory capacities.) Most of them will arrive in February, but Lexar is particularly chuffed about a 400X 128GB SDXC card due in April that the company boasts will be the first at that capacity using UHS-I.

For those who prefer absolutes, 400X translates to 60MBps … Read more

Lexar Media has overhauled its 2007-era dual-slot professional flash card reader to support fast new cards and the higher-speed USB 3.0 interface that have arrived in the last four years.

Like its predecessor, the new reader handles CompactFlash (CF) and Secure Digital (SD) memory cards. Unlike its predecessor, it can handle SDXC, a newer member of the SD card lineage that provides for larger capacities, and SD's UHS-1 higher-speed interface.

Things didn't change on the CF side of the shop; the older model supported the present high-speed standard for CompactFlash, called UDMA (Ultra Direct Memory Access). CompactFlash … Read more

Photographers and videographers with a lot of data spend a lot of time waiting for files to transfer to their computers, sometimes paying a premium for FireWire 800 ports to edge out the speeds of USB 2.0.

Now the USB 3.0 generation of flash card readers is starting to arrive, though, including Delkin Devices' $40 USB 3.0 Multi-Card Reader and Writer. The company announced yesterday that the products are now shipping from its San Diego factory.

Its raw data transfer rate of 5 gigabits per second promises to leapfrog the 800 megabits per second of FireWire 800 … Read more

If Lexar's recently reviewed 128GB Echo MX thumbdrive makes you wonder when you'll have something like the same capacity for your camera, the answer is here.

Lexar announced today that it is now shipping the first 128GB Professional Secure Digital Extended Capacity (SDXC) memory card.

First announced at CES 2011, the new SDXC memory card comes in two capacities, 128GB and 64GB, and offers speeds of up to 133x (about 20MBps). This means the new card enables you to take multiple hi-def photos continuously or record extended-length 1080p HD videos without having to stop and swap the memory … Read more

The SD Association announced a new interface for flash memory cards today that triples data transfer speeds.

The faster SD card specification was expected since the group started previewing it in September. But more unusually for the consortium, the SD Association also announced an e-book specification at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

"Our new e-Book application...opens broad consumer access to e-book content, and turns billions of existing SD mobile phones and devices into e-readers," Norm Frentz, chairman of the SD Association, said in a statement. "SD continues to evolve its capabilities to support voracious consumer demand for portable movies, television broadcasts, high-definition home videos, and now full-color books."

It's not yet clear who among e-book reader makers, publishers, or other companies are on board with the new specification, but two partners showing eBook support at CES are Toshiba and Sharp, the association said. Such partnerships will be important to its success, though, and there already are other e-book formats, such as ePub.

But eBook won't live in isolation. "The association plans to support popular external formats like ePublish, CPS, XMDF and ".book" formats in the near future," said SD Association communications director Kevin Schader. And to keep content publishers happy, it's free to use and supports copy protection. … Read more

Lexar Media, one of the premium-brand flash memory card makers, will introduce its first SDXC cards later this quarter with two high-end models geared for professionals, a 64GB card for $500 and a 128GB card for $700.

The 128GB model illustrates the narrowing gap between the SD lineage and a rival format popular among professionals, CompactFlash, which tops out at 64GB for mainstream brands. But while SDXC might be a step ahead in capacity--at least when it comes to announced products--CompactFlash leads in a different domain, data transfer speed.

Each of Lexar's new SDXC cards, with a 133X speed … Read more

BERLIN--The SD Card Association is working on a revision to its widely used flash memory card technology that should nearly triple the data-transfer speeds of mainstream SDHC and larger-capacity SDXC cards.

The specification should be complete in the first quarter of 2011, with products coming about a year afterward, said Akihiro Kasahara, a member of the association's marketing committee, in an interview at the IFA electronics show here.

Today's SD cards have data-transfer buses with a maximum speed of 104MB per second, though actual read and write speeds are somewhat slower. The new specification, just called SD 4.0 for now, will increase that to 300MB/sec, said Kevin Schader, the association's director of communications.

Faster data-transfer speeds aren't necessary for everyone, but newer uses make them important. Flash cards are functioning more like solid-state drives in modern gadgets such as Android smartphones and now tablets, too. High-definition videocameras or video SLRs have a tremendous appetite for data. Writing to a card faster frees cameras up for the next shot or take sooner, and of course means it can be faster for people to transfer files to their computers once those support the higher speeds as well. … Read more