How to determine the actual capabilities of my SD card reader?

Question

I have an Intel Compute Stick STCK1A8LFC which I use as a media player running Linux. I'm using a 128 GB Micro SD Card for storage and would like to upgrade to a larger one if possible.

The Intel specs claim that cards are supported from 8 GB to 128 GB, which is false, as I've successfully tested a 2 GB card. In the past I've also used HDDs & SSDs in computers which have had larger than the "supported" capacity.

I do not have a card larger than 128 GB to test, and they are expensive, so I would like to know if there is a way to determine an SD Card Reader's actual capabilities, either through my device's interface (like lshw, which doesn't list my card reader), or by determining the exact model of the card reader (which I don't know how to do without lshw), then looking online for specification and hopefully finding it.

There must be a definite range for my SD Card Reader. I don't know why there's a veil over it.

To be clear, this question is about SD Card Readers and not storage solutions, so you don't need to mention USB hubs.

Answer 1

It sounds like your compute stick supports the microSDXC format. This will support microSD, microSDHC and microSDXC cards.

I am assuming you have a 128GB card which has a microSDXC logo on it (or something similar):

In theory, this format will accept cards up to the 2TB limit of SDXC (and backwards compatible to the smallest microSD cards of a handful of MB).

The reason that Intel and other manufacturers put a range of supported cards on their specification is that at the time, it was likely that 128GB cards were the largest cards available to consumers. As it is today, the spec for microSDXC accepts up to 2TB cards, but they don't actually exist yet. The lower limit is arbitrary in this case, and more than likely their "suggested" minimum for using the device.

More information on the different specifications, including backwards compatibility is avaliable at this site.