It’s hard to believe, but the SD memory card is officially 25 years old—a milestone that makes
it old enough to rent a car without a young renter fee.
For many of us, our first brush with removable storage wasn’t an SD card at all. Personally, it
was the Nintendo 64 memory pack—a tiny 256KB cartridge you’d jam into the controller to
save your game progress. That was mid-90s tech, just a few years before the SD card made its
debut. But it shows how deeply we’ve depended on portable data from the start.
The Secure Digital (SD) card launched shortly after the formation of the SD Association (SDA)
in early 2000—a collaboration between SanDisk, Panasonic, and Toshiba. The first versions
offered a whopping 32 to 64 megabytes of storage. Now, in 2025, we have 4TB SD cards that
are 500,000% more powerful, and speeds that are 300 times faster.
And they’re everywhere—in cameras, laptops, drones, smart devices, and yes, even your car’s
dashboard. SD cards have sold over 12 billion units worldwide, evolving alongside consumer
needs while remaining backwards compatible—a rare feat in today’s tech world.
This year also marks 20 years of the microSD card, the tiny titan that revolutionized storage for
mobile phones and handheld consoles.
But SD isn’t just for photos and spreadsheets anymore. Today, these cards support AI
applications, VR/AR content, 360° cameras, medical devices, IoT, and more. Their compact
size and massive capacity make them ideal for the growing demands of modern technology.
As Hiroyuki Sakamoto, President of the SDA, notes, “With 394 zettabytes of data projected by
2028, SD cards will remain a critical, cost-effective solution for consumers and businesses
alike.”
So here’s to the little card that could—and still does. Whether you’re offloading vacation photos
or supporting cutting-edge tech, the SD card has been there for 25 years and shows no signs of
slowing down.