XQD Card Introduction – Rene.E Laboratory Support Center

2024-08-01 Amanda J. Brook Senior Product Manager

Summary

If you are not a photographer, you may never have heard of the XQD Card. Although XQD Card has a low market penetration rate so far, it is the latest product of the development of the memory card, featuring an excellent high write speed. This article will focus on introducing the XQD Card and the ways of data recovery and rapid backup in the case of data lost.

Content

1. XQD Card

2. Differences among XOQ Card, SD and CFast Card

3. How to recover data when data lost happens on XQD Card

4. Short cut of data backup

1. XQD Card

Brief Introduction

XQD is a memory card format primarily developed for flash memory cards, and it offers read and write speeds over 125MB/s based on PCI Express protocol. XQD Card was designed against the defect of CF Card, with smaller in size, faster read and write speeds, and extra capacity, etc. It was a replacement of the CF Card. It was the new memory card format that was first announced in 2010 by SanDisk, Sony and Nikon. Because it uses PCI Express as a data transfer interface, it stood out from all other types of memory card and was immediately picked up by the CompactFlash Association for development.

Performance

XQD has a large storage capacity. The XQD Card with a storage capacity of 1TB has already been announced and the 2TB type will be available soon. The storage capacity available in the market right now is 32GB, 64GB, 128GB and 256GB.

Current Usage

XQD Card is a new memory card format, so it is more expensive. XQD Card slot are installed in some high-end cameras. Among different camera manufactures, Nikon first used single or double XQD Card slots; now, single or double XQD Card slots are installed in some of the professional digital still cameras of Nikon and the high-end cameras of Sony.

Manufactures

At present, the adoption rate of XQD Card is very low. With the decease of Lexar, which is a memory card manufacture, Sony has become the only one manufacturer of XQD Card. However, Nikon plans to launch XQD Card this year.

2. Differences among XOQ Card, SD and CFast Card

Introduction of SD Card and CFast Card

SD Card was developed by SanDisk, Panasonic and Toshiba jointly and was introduced in 1999 to be used on portable devices. Because of its small size and low production costs, SD Card was produced by many manufactures and has become the industry standard. However, SD Card has a maximum storage capacity of 2GB, limited by its file system and other factors. The original SD Card was ceased to produce and it is replaced by the new type of SDHC and SDXC Card.

CFast Card, developed by CF Association, is the new upgraded standard based on CF protocol and uses the SATA 3Gbps connector. It is known as the smallest SATA solid state disk in the world. With the advantage of its storage capacity and speeds, CFast Card gains a foothold in the high-end DSLR market.

Differences among XOQ Card, SD and CFast Card

	XQD Card	CFast Card	SD Card
Capacity	Maximum 2TB (maybe larger)	Maximum 512GB	Maximum 2TB (Theoritical)
Connector	PCIe	SATA 3Gbps	SPI Hardware Ports
Maximum Transmission Speeds	1.4GB/s (maybe higher)	600MB/s	250MB/s
Volume	38.5(W)29.8(L) 3.8(H) mm	36.40(W)42.80(L) 3.30(H) mm	24.0(W)32.0(L) 2.1(H) mm
Applicability	Only can be used in some of the Sony’s and Nikon’s high-end cameras and Vidicons	Except used in high-end DSLR, CFast has been widely used in industrial products, such as Monitoring Server, Facial Recognition System, BOX PC, and Industrial PCs, etc.	Digital camera, PDA and meida player, ect.

3. How to recover data when data lost happens on XQD Card

If data is mistaken deleted or unexpected data loss happens when using the XQD Card, Renee Undeleter can be used to restore data.

Tips Renee Data Recovery is able to restore data from corrupted and mistaken delete files, as well as from formatted, crashed and even initialized hard drive. Only three simple steps are needed to restore your important files or photos.

Renee Undeleter - Simple & Powerful Software for Data Recovery

Easy to use Recover by 3 steps.

Multiple scan modes Fast partition scan, whole partition scan and whole disk scan.

Supported file types Image, video, audio, text, email, etc.

Image creation Create partition image to speed up data backup.

Supported devices SD card, SDHC, SDXC, USB flash drive, hard disk, computer, etc.

▽ Free Trial (Win) ▽ Free Trial (Mac) (Win)

① Launch Renee Undeleter and then please select “Fast Partition Scan” to restore data if the memory card is accidentally formatted.

② Choose the external memory card which you want to recover data from, then click “Next”.

③ Choose one of the scan mode, “ Fast Scan ” can save scan time, but “ Deep Scan ” can restore files with longer history.

Select fast scan mode in renee undeleter

④ Go to Advanced Setting, you can choose either “ Default Settings ” or “ Customized Settings ”, you can find specific type of files that need to be recover rapidly via Renee Data Recovery.

⑤ After the scan is over, you can preview the files which need to be recovered by clicking on it. Click “Recover” and the lost data can be restored.

4. Short cut of data backup

To prevent data loss, it is recommended that important files be backed up regularly. There are two common approaches to back up memory card as follows:

Approach one – Copy all data to the new memory location directly.

Advantages: easy to operate, no requirement on device, back up without internet.

Disadvantages: operation without options, tend to have data duplicated; large volume of data flow which will result in low efficiency; unintentional delete because of duplicated data.

Approach two – Use back up software to back up important data at regular intervals

Advantages: easy to operate; back up without internet; high efficiency; no duplicated data; record data in different time period, increase the possibility of retrieving files that are deleted accidentally; improve the effectiveness of backup files.

If you use memory card frequently and important files need to be back up regularly, it is recommended that Renee Becca software be used to back up data. It can help to increase backup efficiency, and its leading incremental / differential backup technology can save time and disk space.

Renee Becca, a leading backup/recovery solution, protect your e-mail, photo, video, file, bookmark and other important data in every way. By fully backing up your Windows operation system and all the other applications, you can deal with it unhurriedly even if you lose data accidently or delete data mistakenly. The leading Incremental and Differential backup modes of Renee Becca can save your precious time and disk space. Renee Becca uses Volume Shadow Copy technology that assists users with their jobs and data backup in the meantime. It offers free trial.

① Open Renee Becca, click “ Backup ” in the left side, select the “ Disk/Partition Backup ”.

② Select the memory card you want to back up, click “ Backup ”.

③ Wait for the backup finish.

Renee Becca will auto save any new change and the data will not be duplicated. It is efficient and it also saves the last 5 backups (5 backups is by default and can be modified). You can also set up auto backup in a timely manner, which is more convenient.

④ If you want to use backup files, click “ Task ” tab. Find related backup file in the list and then click “ Restore “.