14 DAY TRIAL // The technology for increased storage solutions coming in smaller and smaller form factors is advancing at a fast pace, with Sony aiming to develop a new memory card that will have the potential of providing users with as much as 2TB of storage space in a small and convenient form factor. The specifications for what Sony presented during CES 2009 as the “Memory Stick Format Series for Extended High Capacity” have now surfaced on the company's oss-formats.org website, providing interested users with an insight on the upcoming technology.
According to the aforementioned website, the Memory Stick XC format series should deliver a maximum capacity of 2TB, 60 times larger than the company's Memory Stick Pro, currently at 32GB. What's even more interesting is that, at least on paper, the XC series will have the same form factors as Sony's current PRO series, also featuring support for MagicGate content protection technology as well as Access Control function, currently available in the PRO series. According to the manufacturer's website, the XC series uses and exFAT file system, while the PRO series will use the FAT12/16/32.
Sony's website also includes details on the performance specifications of said XC-series Memory Stick cards, which are expected to provide users with a maximum data transfer rate of 480Mbps (60MB/s) for write and 160 Mbps (20MB/s) for read. The guaranteed minimum read and write speeds will be at 120 Mbps and 40 Mbps, respectively.
We have no info on when a 2TB Memory Stick XC memory card will be made available to market, but it's interesting to see where technology is heading, especially if we look back when a 20GB hard drive was something to brag about. The details released by Sony could open the door to some future 64GB, 128GB memory drives, but we still have a long way to go before we can put 2TB of storage in our phones.
