The wikipedia article says it all. I am capturing some of them.
- SD stands for Secure Digital. Though, the original intention was Super Density Disc.
- SD is now an industry standard, initiated by Toshiba, Panasonic and Sandisk.
- The Secure part of SD was introduced by Toshiba, a legacy (good one) from it's MMC cards (MultiMediaCard). Toshiba included a encryption that prohibited music piracy - a movement mostly know as Digital Rights Management (DRM). This was done because of pressure from music industry.
- SD cards larger than 2GB uses a different technology called SDHC (SD High Capacity).
- (Read Access) Speed is an issue to consider of SD cards.
- The form factor of SD cards can vary in all dimentions. Such variants are: miniSD, microSD (aka TransFlash). These require a simple passive adapater (a physical device to fit in SD slot). The electronic interface remains same.
- SD cards can fit in other cards slots (e.g. CompactFlash, PC cards) via an active electronic adapter.
- You would want to access SD cards from your other devices e.g. PC, printer etc. So, you will need a card reader. One card reader can support many differnet standards of cards (SD and others). Card readers can be built in, or can be externally connected (via UBB or other methods)
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