Panasonic Unveils Durable SD Cards That Can Outlive Reckless Photographers

A few days ago we shared the story of a memory card that stayed alive after three years at the bottom of a muddy creek. What’s important to note is that the card had the luxury of being protected by the Canon XT it was inside — a camera that was utterly destroyed during those three years.

What if memory cards could be as durable as the weatherproof cameras that are becoming popular amongst compact camera users? That’s what Panasonic is trying to do with its new line of sturdy SD cards.

The SDHC and SDX are “proofed” against quite a few things: they’re waterproof, impactproof, shockproof (the electric kind of shock), magnetismproof (is that a word?), heatproof, freezeproof, and X-Rayproof.

If the memory card ever senses that its innards will overheat, it automatically “fuses” itself to prevent damage to the data.

It’ll come in two flavors: the SDAB series will offer 95MB/s read and 80MB/s write for capacities ranging from 8GB to 32GB, while the SDUB line will offer speeds of 90MB/s read and 45MB/s write for capacities of 8MB-64GB (the biggest one is a SDXC card)..

Look for them to arrive on store shelves on September 8, 2012 in Japan, and hopefully shortly afterward around the world (there’s currently no word on international availability).

(via Panasonic via Engadget)


Image credit: Dry Cracked Ground by Aquafornia

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