Secure Digital Card

A decade ago, there was a popular memory card that went by the name of MultiMedia Card (MMC). With the rapid development of electronic gadgets that used memory cards, particularly those of mobile or portable devices, the need for better, faster and more secure cards steadily mounted. Finally, there was an agreement between SanDisk, Toshiba and Panasonic to develop a new and improved version of the MMC format. Out of this collaboration between industry giants came the Secure Digital card.

Physically, the only difference between MMC cards and Secure Digital cards is that the latter is a few millimeters thicker. Otherwise, the real differences lie in their feature set. Secure Digital cards are much faster as they have read, write and transfer rates well above the MMC card limits. In terms of storage capacity, the maximum for MMC cards is only 8GB while that of SD Cards is 32GB. However, it is the added security features that are not present in MMC cards that really separate these two formats. With the capability to use Digital Rights Management technology and apply a "write-protect" tab, SD cards are highly favored by users looking to protect their data. The original secure digital card format has evolved into the SDHC and, lately, the SDXC format.