The SD Card turns 25 years old

Happy birthday to the humble SD card, which is celebrating a major milestone: 25 years since its launch in 2000.

The SD Card Association (SDA), which administers everything SD card, is also marking 20 years since the debut of the smaller but equally impactful microSD card.

Together, these memory cards have been used in billions of devices around the world —12 billion, to be exact— from cameras and phones to game consoles and drones.

Since the early days of 8-megabyte cards, SD technology has grown to offer up to 4 terabytes of storage, with much faster speeds of up to 300mb/s thanks to ongoing improvements like SD Express.

All along, the cards have remained easy to use and, importantly, backward compatible, making it simple for people to expand their device storage without needing new hardware.

By comparison, microSD cards have played a big role in mobile phones, especially in the early days of mobile photography and media.

Today, SD cards are still used in all kinds of everyday gadgets — like action cameras, tablets, gaming devices, and of course, cameras. 

To celebrate the anniversary, the SDA is helping fund the planting of 25,000 trees through environmental groups like OneTreePlanted and the Morino Project. It’s also donating $25,000 to the Audiopedia Foundation, which provides audio-based health and education content to women in rural areas using microSD cards in basic mobile phones.

“SD cards have stuck around because they’re convenient, flexible, and they just work,” said Yosi Pinto, Chairman of the SDA. “Our members continue to adapt the technology to meet new needs — from faster performance to bigger storage — without losing that plug-and-play simplicity.”

With the amount of digital data worldwide expected to keep growing fast — up to 394 zettabytes by 2028 — the SDA says it expects SD cards to remain a reliable and affordable storage option into the future.