Why are there 1TB micro SD cards that are the size fingernail and most 1TB hard drives are bigger than my hand?
In: Technology
a lot of it is due to technical specification. Where an micro SD basically requires the operating system manage how data is written to it, a hard drive has its own system to handle that.
The other part of it is due to industry standards for sizes.
SD cards have only one package of memory limiting performance. Normal size (SSD) drives have multiple packages that give you much better performance: e.g. the SD card will take 8s to weite something, the SSD will only take 1s because it was able to split the write into 8 smaller pieces onto 8 different packages.
Compared to HDDs: SD cards and SSDs have limited number of writes before it dies, HDDs can be written indefinitely because it has magnetic platters that don’t degrade with every write. SD cards and SSDs also have a limited number of reads before the data gets corrupted (known as read disturb), this is more pronounced as the SD card and SSD ages. On SD cards the data needs to be manually refreshed; most SSDs will do this for you automatically; HDDs don’t have this problem.
I have actually read various Amazon reviews on 1TB SD Cards and most people claim that they either don’t work correctly, have major issues (like data suddenly being deleted), have far less space than advertised,…..etc.
Basically the number of technical issues reported with them in the reviews seemed so high that I am doubtful most of them even work correctly at all. Perhaps some very high end and high quality ones might, but otherwise I have my doubts. I would thus most likely never buy one.
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.
Hard drives or HDDs are magnetic storage methods that are a few decades old. They are reliable and you can store a lot of data on them. Their size is due to the mechanical components in them and partially due to standardisation. For example, you can find laptop hard drives that are very small. No need to make them smaller as they are quite slow and the machines that use them are servers or desktop computers.
Solid state drives SSDs have no moving parts and they store data in small memory chips. Their size is the same as a laptop hard drive and this is due to standardisation as well. If you open one of these up, you’ll see it’s mostly empty space with a tiny board a few chips in them. There is no need to make them smaller as most devices have bays where these need to fit. Standards again.
M2 drives are the next gen of SSDs. They are faster than SSDs and as robust, but they are smaller than an SSD. They don’t have any casing which saves a lot of space and the new standard allows for a smaller form factor. So thanks to technology, the industry has agreed to make drives a bit smaller for the next gen of SSDs.
MicroSD cards are tiny yes, but this is because the devices that require them are fairly small as well like your mobile phone. Some of the hardware required to make them work is also on your device so that saves space. They are also limited in terms of input/output. Going smaller than this is probably not practical as they are delicate enough to crack or get lost.
In short, storage gets smaller as technology advances but some of the form factors you see are due to industry standards. While I’m sure they could make an SSD the size of your fingernail, it all depends on what devices can support. It usually takes a few years for different manufacturers to agree/adopt new form factors.
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