Why are there 1TB micro SD cards that are the size fingernail and most 1TB hard drives are bigger than my hand?
In: Technology
The magnetic disc drives are bigger because the physical space to store the data needs to be bigger. That said – a lot could probably be smaller but we have standardized the size of a HDD so they fix into a standard drive slot in a computer.
Similarly a SSD is very often mostly empty. If you have an old obsolete one crack it open and take a look – it might be barely more than what looks like an SD drive with a little printed circuit board (PCB) that takes up maybe 10% of the case. Or google “inside SSD case”. The reason for this is the same as above – manufacturers have agreed on a standard size for a SSD case – the case gives manufacturers enough space to make the drives they need to make (some have much more complex PCBs and other supporting infrastructure inside) while ensuring all SSDs are compatible with the standard mounting station in a PC case.
Which brings us back to the SD drive, these can be just the memory chip because all the supporting hardware is inside your camera/computer so it doesn’t need an additional case. The drive is often literally the same size as the actual drive in a SSD (although some SSD drives might have multiple “SD” chips in them to get better storage (ie it might have two 240GB chips) where the SD drive is obviously only one.
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