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Apple released a new Mac mini early this week. The new mini features new design, faster processor and video card as well as HDMI port. One of the new features is also the embedded SD reader on the back. Apple mentions a simple “SD card slot” in the new Mac mini specs page however it looks like it is more that that. The new SD reader supports the new SD 3.0 specification SDXC. SDXC stands for Secure Digital Extended Capacity and can support up to 2TB cards.
The older SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) cards also have a maximum capacity of 2 TB based on the card data structures, but this is artificially limited to 32 GB by the SD 2.0 specification. The maximum transfer rate of SDXCs which follow the SD 3.0 specification is 832 Mbit/s. The selected file system is Microsoft’s proprietary exFAT in the official SDXC specification, however, as with SD and SDHC, it is still a plain block device and thus arbitrary partitioning and other file systems can be used, such as FAT32, NTFS, ext2, etc.