As technology improves, it nearly always gets smaller unless it's a smartphone. Twenty years ago the idea of being able to store half a terabyte of information on a card the size of your fingernail was utter madness. Hell, the idea of being able to store half a terabyte at all at a consumer level was but the fevered dream of a madman.
And yet here we are, able to show off to you the world's largest commercial available Micro SD card that holds a whopping 512GB on its tiny footprint, courtesy of Integral. It's an ideal partner for the Nintendo Switch if you're willing to cough up the somewhat intimidating price tag of £299.99, and contrary to certain fears the UHS-I standard is perfectly useable on Nintendo's hybrid.
We tested the card to see its read and write capabilities (as well as verifying that it is indeed 512GB), and the results were pretty damned tasty. Super Mario Odyssey took just 1.5 seconds longer to load from the Micro SD card as opposed to the Switch's internal storage, and was actually 4.5 seconds faster than loading from the physical game card.
Write speeds were almost as impressive, with the Switch being able to download Sonic Mania onto the internal storage in 2 minutes and 17 seconds, and download to the Micro SD card in 2 minutes and 36 seconds. At a difference of just 19 seconds which is about 14% it's certainly not as nippy as the standard storage that comes on the Switch but that's to be expected really and can't be argued as a significant difference.
All in all we're very pleased with what Integral has offered with this card. At the end of the day it is only a means of storage and there isn't an awful lot it can get wrong beyond slow data transfer, which thankfully it doesn't show any significant signs of with the Switch. Let us know whether your pockets are deep enough to consider picking one of these beasts up in the comments below.
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Comments 76
Can't see me ever needing this amount of storage on my Switch. I've got 32gb and that's plenty for me
How many videos of Splatoon can I store?
I’ve filled my 126gb and have games I can’t install currently so looking for another card but the price of this is a killer - I’ll go for a 200 one as the can be picked up reasonably now
@Xaessya More than four. I checked.
When storage media costs more than the console itself we have a problem. I’ll be waiting a few years until media like this becomes more reasonably priced.
The amount of storage is tempting but buying an SD card that costs more than the console itself isn't...
@Stocksy don’t you fancy archiving some of the games you’re not playing and save a few bucks?
Nice. I'll pick it up in 10 years when its reasonably affordable.
I have a 200 GB that I'm being very skittish about filling up because I want it to last the Switch's life. This would be a great thing to have though.
I've consumed a 128 GB card already and starting to chip away at my internal storage with 11 GB left.
I'm eyeing 256 GB cards now as I don't even have big guns like Skyrim, Bayonetta, or Doom yet. I'll have to bite the bullet by June I bet.
The great games keep flowing. But with great games comes a great need for more storage.
"...it's not a 4k camera, it is a video game console."
Right you are, sir!
Yeah no thanks, the micro SD card shouldn’t be more expensive than my game console.
The cost of these things is just one of many reasons why $60 retail games are always going to be physical purchases for me. At least until I don't have a choice in the matter.
@Hikingguy oh yes I agree that downloading games is oh so attractive for that very reason. However I cannot afford the level of storage for me to have all my games at once and I’m happy that Ninty didn’t force that price onto us. I can only have a few single player games on the go at any one time so I can plan ahead and have those that I’m playing or may want to start downloaded, plus a few multiplayer games. Works for me. But I totally understand the want to have all games accessible all the time and if I had that kind of money...
SanDisk 200GB Ultra is £55.19 Deal of the Day on Amazon UK. https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-microSDXC-Memory-Adapter-Performance/dp/B073JY5T7T/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522086122&sr=8-1&keywords=200gb+sandisk
I got a 128gb sandisk card on black friday off amazon for $30. Still have most of empty, but I buy physical when possible.
512GB....Gimme a break. I've got 128GB in my Switch, 17 digital games and I still 88GB of free space.
I own a 64GB card and I'm happy with it. I prefer my games physical so I think this is enough for me, but I fear that more games with mandatory downloads become more and more common.
Out of topic, anyone knows a better way to transfer videos and pictures from the Switch to a PC? Uploading to Facebook or Twitter is not really fast when you have more than a dozen.
@Audiobrainiac $10 in Walmart sale bucket lol
@AlexOlney what did you do its all ready sold out lol
200 GB sounds good, 512 GB is overkill for price
Got a 256gb card i had laying around from work that still works great for me.
i have one that is about 1TB in size. my 256GB MicroSD filled up way too fast. besides now a days 512GB is not that much storage. i miss the days when less than 1GB was a lot of storage space,
I'll just delete games as I get done with them, thanks.
And... it has the same dimensions as every other microSD card. It's.Nothing.Special.
Move on, there's nothing to see here...
Got the 200 one. I think I'll be seeing it off before the switch lifetime is done for but who knows - I'm always eyeing bigger sizes. Not needed for now, but when the time comes, here's hoping I can double my storage for a fair price
I have a 400GB card in my Switch at the moment. No regrets.
I'm ready to go well beyond my current stock of 31 all-digital games at a moment's notice.
P.S. The Switch's card reader isn't really capable of performing beyond UHS-1 anyway, so that really shouldn't hold anyone back.
Seriously, the 256GB UHS-3 card I had in mine before upgrading to the 400GB UHS-1 card that's in there now didn't perform any faster.
I know when this was announced a few months back there were some angry comments about the speed of the thing. To be honest, the speed was never going to be an issue.
The real issue is that the price of this is insane!
I bought my Switch for £220 brand new last year with a special discount at Very. I could buy a 200gb card on top of that which is more than enough and I would have spent less than just this storage.
What is more frustrating is that the cheapest model’s of Nintendo’s rivals comes with 500gb as standard. I’m not gonna moan about Nintendo not putting enough storage in, but I do feel they could/should do more to address this issue.
@Vriess I bought a 128gb in January and I have 2gb left.I reckon I could easily fill 512gb card on top of this over the life of Switch. Not a chance I'd pay that much though. My next card will be a 200gb one and I'll start buying more physical games, only bought 2 so far.
A 128gb for around €50 will do me nicely.
I wish Nintendo would cut to the chase and announce External Harddrive support for docked mode. It won't effect the Micro SD Card sales much, you'd still need big ones for when you're on the go.
@stevenw45
One Terabyte SD cards don't exist, friend. If you bought one claiming to be a Terabyte, you got had. Some places sell big ones that are actually just small ones with fake formatting to make them appear large. Go beyond the 8 or 16 gigs they really are and your data get corrupted.
@TDS_Computer
i actually made the 1TB MicroSD card myself. i like creating my own computer hardware from time to time; mostly as a hobby.
it took a while to successfully create a working 1TB MicroSD myself. it has a few issues.
one of those issues is a formatting issue. because of limitations of modern day hardware, i had to format the MicroSD card with multiple partitions.
sadly the Nintendo Switch can only read one partition at a time. i have the same issue with most devices.
however, i found a way to change the default partition on the MicroSD card so that the Nintendo Switch can access all of the data on the MicroSD card.
unfortunately the MicroSD card has to be removed from the Nintendo Switch to change the data partition that will be used with the device.
@AlexOlney "Twenty years ago the idea of being able to store half a terabyte of information on a card the size of your fingernail was utter madness. " I'm 36 & 20 years ago I was at college taking Computing A-Level... and I carried all my information around on floppy disks. To hold 512GB I'd have to lug around 350,000+ floppy disks.
Edited: Thanks @Sillygostly
I need that so bad ., LoL
By the time my 256gb one fills up, the this will be affordable or they will have 1tb ones that I’ll end up getting.
I still have around 100GB left on my 128GB microSD card I bought back in late November and a big chunk of that was the DOOM multiplayer update. Don't think I'll need a replacement for at least another year unless VC ends up being a thing Nintendo does with Switch (not sure, they may just only attach retro stuff to the paid online subscription).
Planning on getting a relatively cheap micro SD for my birthday, same brand as the one I have right now (Patriot brand, 256 gigs, $100 on Amazon).
Got a 200GB in my Switch and buy 75%+ physical so only have used up half my available storage, but I'd still like this if I could afford it. With games like L.A. Noire (which i finally broke down and bought) requiring huge chunks of your memory, more can be a good thing.
It's as much as my external drive.
That's double the SSD in my desktop.
It's more than fifteen times what the Switch comes with from the factory.
That thing has more storage than my main computer. If I ever got something like that, I'd use it for a PC or a tablet, not a game console, and only then after the price comes down.
I'm good with the 200GB SD card in my Switch now...and I don't buy that many digital games so that might have been overkill.
@DanteSolablood : You would need well over 350,000 floppy discs (at the standard 1.44MB capacity) to store 512GB on them.
I think the best part about this sort of thing is that it drives down the price of the lesser cards. 128 - 256 will eventually become cheaper because of this. Memory and storage have both always had a sweet spot where you get a lot for a reasonable price. This ratchets the sweet spot upwards.
I bought 200 GB card when I purchased my Switch figuring it would be more than enough space. I’ve since used nearly 150GB and have tons of games I still need to pick up. Hopefully the price comes down on these and I can pick one up for under $200. Should have grabbed that 400GB card when Amazon had it on sale for $150
Too expensive. Buy physical games whenever possible. Support the used/resale game market and also lets you loan to friends/family.
But that price!
@Curlynob Thanks for the heads up regarding the Amazon deal of the day. Just ordered the 200GB with 40 mins left, cheers.
1 Micro SD Card 512 GB = 1 Nintendo Switch
What ?!
@sillygostly Haha, for some reason I remembered 3.4mb.. I don't think my brain could handle how small all my files were back then. Either that or I was confusing the 3.5" size with the storage. Either way, that's a whole lot of disks.
@stevenw45 It seems you've switched from saying you have a 1TB MicroSD Card (currently doesn't exist) to 1GB, which is commercially available. Did you mean 1GB from the start? After all, adding partitions to a storage medium helps you divide up the storage differently but can't add space onto a disc/card. It's like saying you can make your house bigger by adding shelves.
i said 1GB when i meant 1TB. thanks for catching my typo. i will fix it soon...
in terms of storage space it is possible. there are also a lot of file systems that are available for use. i can write out the math for you if you would like.... but i do not think putting 3000+ lines of codes on nintendolife explaining it all would be a good choice.
Nintendo should support external hard drive like PS4, let the drive be connected to the dock's usb port... yes sure you can't play those games when undocked but that's a downside most are willing to accept.
I have a 256G in my Switch now but At the rate the games are hitting the Switch weekly this size card for me will be one day unavoidable. 👍
I am fine with my 200GB card right now. But in 2-3 year when this card inevitably drops to 150 dollars, I will probably pick one up.
@Nincompoop Not really. A pretty large majority of players use the Switch for its hybrid nature. Even just as simple as picking the Switch up and playing it in another room or on the toilet.
My 200GB SD card has been a good pal, though I'm already near the 50% mark. But, yeah, I could just delete the games I'm done with.
@stevenw45 No worries, while partitioning can not add more space to a disk (inherent in the name, partitioning only ever divides up a set amount of space) - however, getting into file formats is beyond my personal knowledge & definitely too long & boring to post.
Though if I was hazarding a guess, it sounds like you're using WinZip to reduce the file sizes to give you a nominal 1TB.
@mailman In one way it adding in external drive support would have been a great idea from the start, the downside though is that it was in Nintendo's best interest to have people using the portable function as visibly as possible so the Switch could sell itself... with external storage so much cheaper than MicroSDs, there's the chance most people would just get used to leaving the Switch docked 90% of the time.
I'm sure external storage will arrive in a future update, though you then have the issue of deciding which games you want to lose access to when you remove your Switch from the dock.
thank badness that this actually exists outside of a press release. a better test would be for reliability as less known brands tend to have less reliability - even some known brands tbh. how to test that tho'?
I have a 200GB and doing just fine as most of my games are physical. Perhaps I'll need to upgrade in 2019 but for now I'm good
I dunno, you can get a nice 200gb for $100 CAD right now, or a 512 for 3 or 4 hundred depending on the brand. Can't help but feel like that's too steep a divide. Waiting for the market to bring the price down.
@DanteSolablood
i said "file system", not "file type". file system examples: FAT, exFAT, FAT32, NTFS, and much more. each file system has its own type of file compression system. a 1TB SD card actually stores less than 980GB of data once it has been formatted.
you are somewhat right about the file compression, but not in the way you think. it is done at the hardware level, not the software level.
if i used Winzip, which is software based file compression; than the Nintendo Switch and many other devices would not be able to read or detect the partitions on the MicroSD card that i made.
when i made my custom MicroSD card, i picked a multi-partition type format because of performance, and stability reasons for getting the hardware to work as desired.
i could have created it with a single partition, but the MicroSD card kept failing when data was written to a certain sector. and i did not want my Nintendo Switch to possibly brick because of an error that gave my laptop a BSOD.
and thanks to your comments, i came up with an idea of how to fix certain issues on my custom made MicroSD card.
once i make a properly working version of my 1.1TB MicroSD cards, i might post a link on nintendolife, so that you guys may purchase them for use with the Nintendo switch.
and FYI, when it comes to making my own hardware, i can be a bit of a perfectionist. so, it may not be ready for a while.
@Stocksy @beazlen1 @Hikingguy There's no need to either spend a bunch of money upgrading SD cards when they're full, or to archive games to create more space; you can just use multiple SD cards and switch between them in exactly the same way you switch between physical carts. (Actually not exactly the same way--Nintendo says you should turn the system off first.) Games which aren't on the current SD card will have an icon indicating that they are unavailable to launch, but otherwise everything behaves the same. I even found a micro SD card case on eBay for five bucks that's the size of a stack of three credit cards, which easily fits in the Switch carrying case that I assume everyone who carries it around has bought, so you'll still have all of your digital games at hand.
I picked up a couple 200GB cards for $50 a pop during the Black Friday sales last year, so I'm set for a while. I don't really see myself filling up a 200GB card anytime soon anyway, since I mostly buy physical.
I have a feeling that by the time I need to upgrade to a larger SD card, the 400GB cards will be a lot more affordable.
I'll take the Amazon 400gb at 215us it now is going close to 189 so far. I only got Physical but saves and system updates can eat away at the system storage. And that's no laughing matter.
Nice... But pricey. I'll stick with my two 200 gig cards🤔
What Switch owner needs 512gb of space? This is why I prefer physical, plus the cartridges are so tasty!
I'm happy with my 200GB for now. Will prob change to 512 in 2-3-4 years depending on my current card.
My 200 is almost full and will be once I get Kirby, DK, and Dark Souls so I’ll be looking for more in May/June.
Just have to decide between the waiting for a price cut on the 400 and the release of the 512. The idea of having all of those games on Switch turns me on so much. The cost of these right now? Ouch
lol, no, I'd rather pick up a Samsung 1tb Evo SSD than that. My two 128g SDs will be more than enough for the next 5-7 years as I will always buy physical whenever.
@Heavyarms55 With an external hard drive connected to the dock you will at least be able to use it as a backup drive. Better than re-downloading games you deleted, transferring games back and forth from a hard drive is quicker and easier.
This 512gb card will be in high demand within the next few months when Switch piracy starts. Nintendo is busy rolling out a new revision of Switch to prevent it but 20 million Switch has already been sold with a vulnerability. The success of Switch is also a curse to Nintendo.
@DanteSolablood To be honest, it sounds more like he's making up garbage to sound intelligent or cool or something. I say this as an IT professional of the past 12 years that does understand storage, file systems, etc... To be fair, my background is not in storage (Formerly network engineer, current software dev) but I know enough to know that he is pretty clearly not knowledgeable on the subject whatsoever, apart from googling some key terms. Nevermind the fact that he has repeatedly stated he was going to make a 1TB card, something that requires microscopic precision, a clean room, and millions of dollars (Probably far more) of highly specialized manufacturing equipment. There's a reason the big companies (You know, the ones that actually do make these things) have yet to put out a 1TB card. The memory chips simply don't exist.
Additionally, file system compression has nothing to do with why an OS reports less available space than the card. Manufacturers use the prefixes kilo, mega, giga, etc... mathematically correct to mean powers of 1,000. However, that's not how computers work - due to the way counting in binary works, computers have always used powers of 2. A Byte is 8 bits (B vs b, another cause for confusion) and there are 1024 Bytes in a KB, 1024KB in a MB, etc... If you are looking at what a manufacturer advertises as 1TB, you'll actually get about (1,000,000,000,000 bytes / (1024 x 1024 x 1024) = 931.322 GB of storage.
@Hikingguy Having my whole game library available on the go is certainly what I'd ideally like. It doesn't have to be all or nothing though. Having some of my game library available on the go is still better than none, so that leaves room to find an acceptable compromise between cost and convenience. If I was rich I'd be all over this, but as it is, I'll make do with a smaller card at a more reasonable price, and just keep the games I'm most likely to want to play on the go available.
@roadrunner343 Oh I understand file compression, I actually have studied computing at college, it was more of a joke. Though I would point out that a kilobyte is now actually 1000 bytes, 1024mb was redefined at as a kibibyte. Binary is a pain in the backside, especially as having to learn binary long division.
As for the 1TB card.. it does sound like he's making it up & using "partition" when he can't think of a word that adequately fills in a knowledge gap. If he's actually made a 1TB MicroSD card at home before Sandisk... then we likely have our first billionnaire!
@DanteSolablood I couldn't tell if you were just humoring him, or if you were actually buying into it. I typed out a response 2 or 3 times, but kept deleting it because I didn't feel like starting an argument over something stupid. Then I saw an even more nonsensical reply than the first and couldn't resist anymore =D
On the topic of Kilobyte vs. Kibibyte, it's true depending on what your definition of definition is =D For example, ISO/IEC (Standards body) definition is exactly as you say - Kibi, Mebi, Gibi, etc... but JEDEC (Memory standards) still adhere to Kilo, Mega, Giga, etc... So the standards specifically related to memory use the original terms, still. I would also note that I've never actually heard anyone use the terms Kibi/Mebi/Gibi in conversation - not even the Systems/Storage teams I've worked with - unless it was mentioned anecdotally as a "Did you know" sort of statement. All the tech blogs, publications, and professionals I've worked with still use Kilo/Mega/Giga, and I don't see that changing anytime soon, simply because it's been used that way for so long.
I have this on order now! Had to import from Amazon UK because it's not sold here in the US.
Should arrive by April 24th.
My 400gb card is down the final 100gb. And there's a ton of games coming out I'll be grabbing digitally- Hyrule Warriors, DKC, Dark Souls, Mega Man, Street Fighter, Mario Tennis, Fire Emblem, Bayo3, Valkyria Chronicles 4, Y's VIII, Metroid Prime 4, Yoshi... the list goes on and on.
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