SD cards finally expected to hit 4TB in 2025

Now can we please get them back in phones?

Meanwhile I'm struggling to find 4MB SD cards, so I can easily overwrite it with random data to securely wipe it between uses.

How the heck do people with 4TB SD cards do data hygiene wipes of their medium before crossing international borders? That would take days..

How the heck do people with 4TB SD cards do data hygiene wipes of their medium before crossing international borders?
They don't
I don't know what your particular situation is but if you're just using it on computers you could use LUKS or BitLocker or FileVault. Then if you want to wipe it, you only need to destroy the key and the data is rendered effectively gone.
I assume you're joking, but if not: the 4MB of flash you see is not mapped 1:1 with 4MB of actual flash on the SD card. Instead there might be something like 5MB, but your OS only sees 4MB of that.
The extra unallocated space is used as spare sectors (sectors degrade and must be swapped out) or even just randomly if it somehow increases IO performance (depending on the firmware).
Erasing the 4MB visible to your OS will not erase everything, there still may be whole files or fragments of your files sitting in the extra space. Only drive-vendor specific commands can reliably access this space (if they exist and are available to you, which they mostly are not). Some secure erase commands may wipe the unallocated space but that's vendor specific, not documented and I don't think even supported over the SD interface (although I might be wrong on this last point).
- Link to source? The file size discrepancy is usually due to 1000 vs 1024, but filling the drive with random data until its full should wipe the drive.

I can't fathom a good reason for 4TB SD cards.

Most cameras have CF Express which is probably 5-8 times faster.

Even UHS-III is 600MB/s while CF Express Type B is hitting 4GB/s.

Even so, why would you risk 4TB of data on removable storage.

CF Express is also running PCI-E. This article isn't talking about SD Express.

I think it's primarily targeting the handheld gaming market
Steam games. I want to have all my 50-100 GB games available without having to decide what to uninstall.
Currently I have two 512gb SD cards for my Steam Deck.
If it craps out, it's okay.
- We need a better storage solution than SD cards…
  Doesn’t the steam deck have an upgradeable nvme drive? That would be a much better solution.
My laptop has an SD card slot. So if this were reliable I could add a significant permanent storage capacity to my laptop.
- Valid point, but I think most built in SD card slots are on a laptop can read 100MB/s. Hopefully yours is perhaps USB 3.0 speeds.
I would happily use one for my music and movies to access them on the go. I already have copies elsewhere, so it would be no big loss if the card died.
If you set it up properly (like using apps to sync folders) a big enough sd is like local "cloud" service.
I was thinking about it recently, after my phone data were very close to being deleted (I managed to prevent it eventually), I was angry at how not having an sd slot caused me so many issues. If I had a 1tb sd I would just autosync app backups and files to my card and not worry ~at all about losing data from bootloops etc.

In addition, manufacturers will make a smaller and easier to lose format.

I’m guessing with a three day dump estimate? Thermal throttling on SD cards is brutal.

The article says 10MB/s minimum write speed, which would take 4.6 days to transfer 4TB, so... yeah. Even with the "max theoretical transfer rates" of 104MB/s (which is probably just read if anything) that's still almost 11 hours.

Come on guys, I've had an 8TB microsd card since 2018...my files just start to act funny whenever it is fuller than 8GB ;)

Do people setup RAIDs with sd cards? There should be a super mini box for a sd card RAID

I doubt they would be reliable enough for a RAID array. It would be much better to use m.2 drives.
- They're not reliable individually, but they'd be perfectly reliable in RAID if replaced promptly.
  Although since SD cards degrade on read, I would want to have at least RAID 6. Reading all the data for a rebuild could result in another one dying.
You probably don't want it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2jKKFUnycA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3frnBoqqI_Q
It wouldn't be the best of ideas because the flash used for SD cards do not have the same kind of write endurance as other types of flash media.

Aren't SD cards slow and prone to failures?

The ones used for 4K recordings are not slow 100+MBps, I won't say prone to failure as such, flash storage can only handle a finite number of writes but we can mitigate that by using wear leveling.
- That's pretty slow for terabyte sized storage. And slow compared to the alternatives, too (600 MB/s or Gabs/s).
  Spinning hard disks are faster than this, too. Have been for decade(s).

and i still cant use it in most phones cause there is no freaking port!

To be honest, SD cards are usually not meant for extending storage anyway. They should only ever be used for temporary storage like taking pictures and later transferring them to some other storage medium.

Thank god. I didn't want to live in a world without 4tb SD cards anymore.

Finally! Been waiting for this for since Pacman wouldn't fit on my punch card. 2025 here we come!

Switch is old now.

Who need that much storage on their phone? Honestly asking.

I have 128gb SD on my phone and it's alway full.
Partly a mismanagement issue, but my music library at home is more than 120gb. I'd rather just carry my full library - why not? Storage is cheap.
Then there's video. I prefer pulling video on wifi, rather than stream and burn data. Again, why not? Storage is WAY cheaper than cell data. And I'm being a good neighbor by leaving bandwidth available for other uses.
I won't mind that much storage, the 256GB I have are nearly full.
Phones don't have (full size) SD card slots, this is for cameras and such.