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From my experience with a raspberry pi's, they're disks can easily become corrupted. If I needed a rugged computer out in the field, that would be a last choice

From my experience with a raspberry pi's, they're disks can easily become corrupted. If I needed a rugged computer out in the field, that would be a last choice. (I know he didn't use a pi, but I'm sure the problem still exists.)

dogma1138 10y ago
That's a combination of cheap SD cards and an OS/File System that isn't very conservative on write calls. Older Pi's basically just eat SD cards for lunch when they were used especially if you had swap enabled which you kinda had too for any realistic desktop performance on the early boards. It's slightly less of a problem now they have more RAM and tweaks to the OS made the Pi slightly more compatible with SD cards but you are still going to run into problems if you can't fit everything in RAM unless you are really buying high end SD cards (and even then it's a bet). The same holds kinda true for all of these embedded boards and memory cards (unless you go for CF which are somewhat designed for "HDD" level of RW/ops). If you are going to build Pi style PC I highly recommend to either get one of the Pi like boards that has SATA or get an expansion board like this one http://www.suptronics.com/xseries/x300.html http://www.suptronics.com/xseries/x300.html and just use a normal/low power 2.5" drive.
sorenjan 10y ago
Same here. Twice now I've installed Raspian on a Pi, left it running without having a real plan on what to use it for, come back to it after a couple of months, and found that it's crashed and doesn't boot anymore. They sound like a great option for small stuff where you just want to leave it running without any real power usage, but I just don't trust them anymore. I might try once more with the system on a USB stick and a bunch of tweaks to cut down on the background IO. There are other SBCs with built in flash, that might be an option as well.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
You probably should consider buying better microSD cards and if possible, avoid FAT32.

dogma1138 10y ago

That's a combination of cheap SD cards and an OS/File System that isn't very conservative on write calls. Older Pi's basically just eat SD cards for lunch when they were used especially if you had swap enabled which you kinda had too for any realistic desktop performance on the early boards. It's slightly less of a problem now they have more RAM and tweaks to the OS made the Pi slightly more compatible with SD cards but you are still going to run into problems if you can't fit everything in RAM unless you are really buying high end SD cards (and even then it's a bet). The same holds kinda true for all of these embedded boards and memory cards (unless you go for CF which are somewhat designed for "HDD" level of RW/ops). If you are going to build Pi style PC I highly recommend to either get one of the Pi like boards that has SATA or get an expansion board like this one http://www.suptronics.com/xseries/x300.html http://www.suptronics.com/xseries/x300.html and just use a normal/low power 2.5" drive.

sorenjan 10y ago

Same here. Twice now I've installed Raspian on a Pi, left it running without having a real plan on what to use it for, come back to it after a couple of months, and found that it's crashed and doesn't boot anymore. They sound like a great option for small stuff where you just want to leave it running without any real power usage, but I just don't trust them anymore. I might try once more with the system on a USB stick and a bunch of tweaks to cut down on the background IO. There are other SBCs with built in flash, that might be an option as well.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

You probably should consider buying better microSD cards and if possible, avoid FAT32.