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,

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.