Back in August 2024 SanDisk announced that it had produced the first-ever 8 terabyte SD card and the world's first 4TB MicroSD card. Retail availability was set for 2025, but that came and went. However, it's now been confirmed at Computex 2026 that samples are almost ready to ship.
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Both cards will receive the SDUC designation. This is a new SD class exclusively for cards over 2TB in capacity (which is the current limit for existing SDXC cards). Sounds impressive, but the reality could be more inconvenient. SDUC cards can only be used in devices that specifically support SDUC memory cards, so you won't be able to stick an SDUC card into any old camera with an SD slot. We had the same situation around 15 years ago when SDXC replaced SDHC cards with their 32GB capacity limit.
And just because these new SDUC cards boast a huge capacity, don't expect them to set any speed records. Both new cards will use the UHS-I standard, meaning they’ll have a theoretical maximum transfer speed of around 104 MB/s.
There's also the issue of whether anyone actually needs such a high data capacity on a single SD card. SD is no longer the format of choice for high-performance cameras, as CFexpress has now far surpassed it for read and write speed. SanDisk's 8TB SD card being UHS-I further impedes its real-world utility, rendering it only practical for mid-range cameras topping out at high bit rate 1080p video, which itself doesn't demand a card as big as 8 terabytes.
All this then begs the question: who's actually going to buy a mega-capacity SD or microSD card right now? With today's hyper-inflated memory pricing, such cards are guaranteed to be incredibly expensive, yet few - if any - cameras will currently support them.
