Sony Unveils World's Fastest SD Card

At CP+2017, Sony announced the SF-G UHS-II SD card that features read and write speeds of 300MB/s and 299 MB/s, respectively, which makes it the fastest SD card in the world. Amateur Photographer reports: Available in 32GB, 64GB or 128GB from March 2017, all versions of the cards are compatible with Sony's free file rescue software, for recovering lost content. Pricing has yet to be revealed. Alongside the SF-G series, Sony has also introduced a new memory card reader, the MRW-S1, due for release in April. It features an in-built SuperSpeed USB port for cable-free PC connection, so that your files can be copied faster than by using the slower SD slot on a PC. [From the press release:] "'As the continuous shooting of higher-resolution images and adoption of 4K video with DSLR and mirrorless camera increases, the inherent need for larger, faster and more reliable cards becomes apparent. Thanks to the SF-G series, we continue to show our commitment to providing a full range of extremely high performance media devices to professional photographers and enthusiasts, maximizing their camera performances,' said Romain Rousseau, European Product Marketing Manager."

300 read vs 299 write

[Anonymous Coward]

This really bothers me.

Up your game, Sony.

Hidden extras?

[namgge]

Does it include a root kit?

Re:

[FatdogHaiku]

Just to be sure, I'll wait for the Memory Stick PRO Duo version...

David Manning says "But wait, there's more!"

[jbn-o]

Not just a rootkit, there's also another new patent-encumbered format you don't really need for doing something you'd be better off doing another way, and proprietary firmware that will take away advertised features at some as-yet unannounced date. David Manning says it's "this year's hottest new star!" but I think you'll BE MOVED to consider other options.

Re:Hidden extras? Does it include a root kit?

[grep -v '.*' *]

Yes, the one that you can find.

As for the other one -- we'll, there's only one, so never mind.

All you Apple Haters can bite my shiny metal SD

[SuperKendall]

Sony has also introduced a new memory card reader, the MRW-S1, due for release in April. It features an in-built SuperSpeed USB port for cable-free PC connection, so that your files can be copied faster than by using the slower SD slot on a PC

I seem to recall an awful lot of Apple Haters whining about a certain new MacBook Pro that had dropped the built in SD reader...

You just keep on using your slow vestigial reader while us MacBook Pro owners stay at the forefront of technological advance.

Re:

[SeaFox]

>I seem to recall an awful lot of Apple Haters whining about a certain new MacBook Pro that had dropped the built in SD reader...

You just keep on using your slow vestigial reader while us MacBook Pro owners stay at the forefront of technological advance.

You'll only get that if you buy the Sony card, though. So you have no choice in hardware vendor now.
But I guess you're used to that. /smirk

Re:

[dgatwood]

I seem to recall an awful lot of Apple Haters whining about a certain new MacBook Pro that had dropped the built in SD reader...

We were complaining about the lack of UHS-II support for about five years before they dropped it. Apple dropping it rather than updating it wasn't the first snub, but rather the last straw.

Re:

[scdeimos]

Of course what Sony means by the MRW-S1 being "cable-free" is that it's a big-ass USB dongle that will probably block any ports situated either side of the USB port you choose to plug it into, REF: http://www.sony.jp/rec-media/p... [www.sony.jp]

Re:

[dgatwood]

It will work in a Raspberry Pi, but the Pi doesn't have the required contacts to support UHS-II, so it won't benefit from the extra bus bandwidth. And it doesn't even support UHS-I fully (max speed is 100 MHz instead of 200 MHz) because you apparently can't put the SoC into 1.8V signalling mode (or so I've read). So you'll presumably benefit from improvements to random access time from the faster microcontroller on the SD card, but you won't get the full speed benefit.

Re:

[scdeimos]

Given your two options, it's a "what"... it's a fat dongle. REF: http://www.sony.jp/rec-media/p... [www.sony.jp]

Micro SD format?

[danceswithtrees]

As easy as micro-SDs are to lose, I would like to see this in a format that would work with a Raspberry PI 3. Pricing? I'm hoping its not "if you have to ask..."

Re:

[unixisc]

Actually, seeing SD and Sony brings to mind a question - did they discontinue the memory stick? Yeah, I've lived under a rock as far as Sony goes, but I really haven't been following them. I remember back in the day when every Sony camera or camcorder had a memory stick

Re:

[dave420]

In the time you spent writing that question you could have answered it yourself.

What about random read performance?

[drinkypoo]

For some reason, a lot of uSD cards have poor random read performance. For those of us trying to use them as a root volume for a tiny computer, this is extremely relevant.

Re: What about random read performance?

[Miamicanes]

As bad as their random-read performance is, their random-WRITE performance is usually much, MUCH worse. And almost none do their own wear-leveling, so a Linux swapfile can literally max out the lifetime writes of a microSD card in 1-3 months (because the multi-million stat assumes well-distributed block erasures & writes... if you're scrubbing away at the same few blocks, you'll wear it out in a FRACTION of the rated write-life. That's why AOSP Android ROMs (generally) won't allow you to create a swap p

Re:

[drinkypoo]

this is why I got a Pine A64+... cheapest thing with 2GB RAM. It makes a pretty snazzy Linux server. I don't actually care about the anemic GPU. I'm not even using the video output.

Re: What about random read performance?

[KiloByte]

As bad as their random-read performance is, their random-WRITE performance is usually much, MUCH worse.

You get a massive speed increase if you switch to a better filesystem: btrfs or f2fs.

git reset --hard: 3m45s btrfs, 3m55s f2fs, 12m30s ext4, 16-18m xfs (huge variance)
"./configure && make -j4 && make test" of a shit package with only ~2MB of persistent writes: f2fs 95s, btrfs 97s, xfs 120s, ext4 122s

(class-4 card in a Pine64)

And almost none do their own wear-leveling, so a Linux swapfile can literally max out the lifetime writes of a microSD card in 1-3 months

Not SD but eMMC: Samsung's fancy-schmancy eMMC cards are apparently made by someone no one told about the write endurance problem: I've been running Debian archive rebuilds and other I/O-heavy loads since early 2013 on a 64GB card ($89) in an Odroid-U2, and despite me heavily overcommitting memory (ie, heavy swapping a lot of the time), the card is still going strong.

Re: What about random read performance?

[Miamicanes]

> You get a massive speed increase if you switch to a better filesystem:
> btrfs or f2fs.

For the record, no stock Android kernel I'm aware of allows you to use anything besides FAT, FAT32, or exFAT on a microSD card since sometime between Jellybean and KitKat (some custom kernels restore that capability), for reasons known only to Google. :-(

Is capacity next?

[John.Banister]

The BlackMagic Production camera needs 265 MB/s for it's 30 fps 4000 x 2160 CinemaDNG RAW recording mode, which means it would fill the big card in less than 10 minutes. How can we make amazing quality home movies of our children if we have to fiddle with changing cards every 10 minutes?

Re:

[AHuxley]

Re "if we have to fiddle with changing cards every 10 minutes?"
Buy a pro video camera with a 1TB hard drive or consider a consumer product with h264 or 265 support.

Still they are miffed

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

They tried with betamax, with some strange micro DVD, memory stick. They are sad they have to work on some industry standard.

capacity

[whoozwah]

I see semi frequent headlines about how they're making SD cards faster and faster. Where's the capacity progress? I want terabyte and up microSD cards.

proprietary Sony?

[unixisc]

Proprietary format? For Sony, this was their Memory stick, but this story is about them coming out w/ an SD card, which would then have to mean a card compliant w/ the SD standard. Also, I think it will be a while before you can have TB capacities on thumb drives., let alone micro SDs

Re:

[MrL0G1C]

Also, I think it will be a while before you can have TB capacities on thumb drives

Been around for a while already. Since at least 2013 actually.

Re:

[whoozwah]

I want it for my phone. I can't use a USB drive on my phone.

Re:

[Bob the Super Hamste]

These things keep on progressing usually following moors law like growth. As others have pointed out 1TB ones are available but they are expensive. My rule is that I will pay about $20 for a flash card or thumb drive which means now I can get a 64GB uSD card [microcenter.com] for just under $20, a 64GB USB 3.0 thumb drive [microcenter.com] for about $16, or a 64 GB USB OTG drive [microcenter.com] for about $20. Some time in the next 16 months I should be able to get 128 GB drives at those price points, and in 18 months after that 256GB drives. If I wanted I co