SAN FRANCISCO – That 64GB SDXC card is yesterday’s news (figuratively and literally). The new CompactFlash 5.0 standard promises a ridiculous 144-petabyte theoretical maximum storage capacity for newer CF cards. Finally, you’ll be able to store your media library and the libraries of your closest 70,000 friends in your pocket!

While SDXC cards are happy with their 2 terabyte capacity maximum, the CompactFlash association is breaking all kinds of reasonable expectations with their 5.0 specification cards. CF cards have always been known for supporting higher capacities than other flash memory technologies, and the announced 5.0 spec lives up that legacy.

To put the 144 petabyte capacity in perspective, 1 petabyte is equal to 1,024 terabytes of data. And 1 terabyte is equal to 1024 gigabytes of data, a measurement we’re more used to seeing everyday. Assuming most of us currently have 2 terabytes of data (which may be overdoing it for the average computer user), that comes out to more than 70,000 libraries that can be stored one CF card.

The future looks near endless for storage on your portable media. We’ll be on the look out to see what comes of the CompactFlash 5.0 standard.