8 ms·

I gave up on using raspberry pi after it destroyed several expensive micro SD cards. The device is amazing, but the dependence on brittle micro SD is a deal bre

I gave up on using raspberry pi after it destroyed several expensive micro SD cards. The device is amazing, but the dependence on brittle micro SD is a deal breaker for me. I just want to boot over USB with no micro SD. Have they solved this issue?

Theizestooke 8y ago
I had a similar experience with my raspberry pi, and the only alternative I found was to use a banana pi with sata.
FredFS456 8y ago
Yes, https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/msd.md https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry... You can also PXE boot without an SD card, which may be best for file system durability.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
moftz 8y ago
You still need an SD card in there but all it needs is a bootloader and a config file that allows booting from USB. You can make the /boot partition read only so there's no chance of it being screwed up. SD cards do suck but at least they are cheap enough now that you can keep some low capacity ones with bootloaders installed on hand.
- noonespecial 8y ago
  No longer true. I've got several 3s as NAS's running exclusively off their USB drives.
- Florin_Andrei 8y ago
  > You still need an SD card in there Not true anymore.
- wolrah 8y ago
  Pi 2 requires a permanent SD card as its built-in bootloader does not support network booting. It does not support USB booting. Pi 3 B has support for both USB and network booting in its bootloader, but they are disabled by default. They are turned on by modifying some OTP configuration bits, which is a permanent change. Once set the SD card is no longer required. Pi 3 B+ has network and USB booting enabled by default. Presumably Pi 3 A+ will support USB booting out of the box, who knows it it'll also support USB ethernet adapters for PXE.
bipson 8y ago
SD-card corruption is a real problem on RPi (see OpenHAB forums). Supposedly the SD-card driver is not the greatest which together with the system's design makes writes fail silently. This cost is half a day once, since we did not understand what was going on with a config not being persisted over reboots. Mounting root read only and only writing explicitly through the "ro/re" scripts helps a lot and should be the default IMO. The biggest issue some people have with RPis though, is their hackish software, e.g. the kernel. This has become better apparently, but it always was a shame that you couldn't just run a generic kernel/distro. I had good experiences with the BeagleBoneBlack, they come with eMMC and quite a few smart additions (e.g. a power button). Twice as expensive though.
- stdclass 8y ago
  That one bit me really hard today. We're using hundreds of raspberry's as digital signage devices and before deploying them I checked a few of them and found out that sometimes the source files of the app were empty. After a lot of headscratching and googling we boiled it down to a write delay to the SD card. If you do echo "test" > test.txt and power off the device like 5 sec. after, and power it on again, there was a file called test.txt with 0 bytes. I'm still baffled how something like this can be a common problem especially since raspberry pi usage is so widespread
  - gubby 8y ago
    When you say you powered it off, was that a safe shutdown or did you just pull the power? Most file system drivers delay writes, I suspect some variant of your test (if it was unsafe shutdown) could be reproduced on almost any system.
    - stdclass 8y ago
      It was an unsafe shutdown, meaning I just pulled the plug. But it was at least several seconds after saving it. I've never seen behaviour like this before.
      - 8y ago
kup0 8y ago
May not be related to your particular issue, but many instances I have seen where people report SD corruption were due to running the Pi off of USB hub/port power only (essentially underpowered) instead of from a wall plug -> USB power adapter. Been running daily for a couple of years now as a Pi-hole with no SD corruption (3B+ model). Still using the same card as I had in the beginning as well (Samsung Evo)
- H1Supreme 8y ago
  I have two that run all the time, and have been for over a year. I access them strictly via SSH, and they're always plugged into the wall. So, you may be on to something. That said, I do agree with OP's dislike of SD cards. I've had more than my share go bad in other devices.
  - kup0 8y ago
    True, I would much prefer eMMC at a minimum (or a SATA connector and/or USB3 port that could boot an SSD and take advantage of its speed). I would definitely pay extra for these types of features vs. having to use SD
- giobox 8y ago
  This is indeed an issue, many usb 2 style chargers only provide 500ma per port, the Pi 3 is recommended for use with 2.5A power supplies. The official FAQ calls this out as well. Even many wall chargers don’t provide this - the standard one shipped with an iPhone that many people likely have isn’t powerful enough either. > https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/faqs/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/faqs/
  - naikrovek 8y ago
    The only time I have ever witnessed a Pi actually using 2.5A is when it had an official touch screen attached, a camera running, as well as something in each USB port. I think continuous 2.5A is not needed, but is needed for an instant or two, here and there, if you are running headless. All most people would need is a sizeable capacitor across the input power pins, perhaps. Power supplies (people buying cheap ones, or being supplied with cheap ones -- looking at you, Amazon raspi kit sellers) are the number one source of failures that I have encountered with the pi. A good power supply is a lot more expensive than a cheap one, and people are reluctant to invest in a $20 supply when a $5 one has the same rating, so I can't blame anyone for that other than the sellers.
learc83 8y ago
About 5 years ago, I was running a startup that had Raspberry Pis (we really need a better plural) deployed to numerous customers, and SD card corruption was a big problem. If I remember correctly the problem generally happened when there was a power loss during writes to the SD card. I ended up creating a RAM disk and only writing to that. Once every 5 minutes or so I would flush anything that needed to be permanent to a partition on the SD card. And once every hour I'd save anything really important to an s3 bucket. SQLite also performed much better running in memory than it did directly from on the SD card. That mostly solved the problem, but I still shipped every unit with an extra SD card and instructions on swapping it out just in case.
- zck 8y ago
  > ...Raspberry Pis (we really need a better plural)... Raspberry Tau comes to mind. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_(geometry)#Tau_proposals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_(geometry)#Tau_proposals). It could mean just two Raspberry Pis, or I guess any amount more than one.
  - babypuncher 8y ago
    Raspberry Pii
    - ColanR 8y ago
      Raspberry Pi^N
      - reaperducer 8y ago
        Raspberry πs?
- XCSme 8y ago
  Raspberry Piss sounds fine to me.
- 1000units 8y ago
  They are Raspberries Pi.
robotmay 8y ago
Urgh we have a fleet of Pi units and this is a common issue for us, particularly in buildings with dodgy power supplies. I've got a Beaglebone Black to test out as a gradual replacement, as that has enough built-in storage for us to use.
zemnl 8y ago
Where I work we have many PI 1 and PI 3 in our facility. They have been running for almost 3 years, 24/7, 365 days a year. We got a few instances of corrupted cards so, about 6 months ago, in order to reduce writes on the cards, we decided to reduce logging done by our software running on them, and they have been working perfectly since then.
- acdanger 8y ago
  Curious, where do you work? I’ve not come across anyone else using RPIs at work.
KindOne 8y ago
Consumer grade SD cards are crap. Try some industrial grade. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16776344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16776344
pulse7 8y ago
First: Your SD cards are most probably not destroyed, but have corrupt file system due to the unsafe shutdown. Second: You can boot from USB with no micro SD with latest firmware. RPI will look first for SD card and then try to boot from USB if no SD card is found. You can even set a one-time-programmable (OTP) bit to skip SD card lookup.
- andyidsinga 8y ago
  yep -- I've had this exact issue on zero w - corrupt FS, but not physically destroyed.
  - andyidsinga 8y ago
    fwiw - as an addendum to that comment - I like using S3 to get my data off the zero w ASAP. ..then corrupt os etc doesn't cause too much down time and data loss.
    - jws 8y ago
      If you store your data under /run (or /var/run) your district will probably put it on a RAM disk. You’ll lose it in a crash, but you won’t be writing to the SD card and provoking it to corrupt in that crash. If you then adjust your systemd journal to not write very often you have eliminated most of your SD writes. The remote sensor systems I run lose power from time to time during the year, sometimes once a day. I’d say each time there used to be something like a 0.1% to 1% chance of corruption. Since I’ve moved to /run and a slower journal I haven’t lost an SD card[1]. Thus far it seems I have at least an order of magnitude improvement. [1] Well, I had a wind turbine tower collapse in an inaccessible location. The raspberry pi is in a lake now, but it can’t have gone far so I don’t call it “lost”. I’ll dive and recover it in the spring. That camera/sensor has spent a couple months underwater before. In fact, I’ve had three systems end up underwater for months and all the SD cards have been fine when recovered.
      - ageofwant 8y ago
        Mate, seems you have your data recovery issues licked. Perhaps now is the time to spend some time on the structural integrity of your windmills :-)
forinti 8y ago
I have several pis and never lost a card except for two I broke because I opened the case without taking them out first.
naikrovek 8y ago
Folks have associated corrupt SD cards to overclocking, all the way to stating outright that overclocking will corrupt your SD card 100% of the time, if used long enough. So, if you're overclocking, don't do that if you're using SD cards. With Pi firmware newer than late 2016 (if I recall) you can write a file to an SD card that sets a bit in NVRAM somewhere telling it to boot to USB from that point onwards, and then you can operate without that SD card or any other going forward. Thumb drives are usually faster and more durable than SD cards.
Florin_Andrei 8y ago
My internet router / firewall / VPN / DHCP / DNS at home is an RPi 3 booting from a USB drive permanently plugged into it. Google search how to do it.
heywire 8y ago
Somehow I've been super lucky. I've got a Pi B+ that has been running nonstop in my garage for years as a security camera. It doesn't have any kind of battery backup, though power outages here are pretty rare. I've also got a rev 1 model B set up with an RTLSDR dongle to log readings from my gas meter. Same situation.
monochromatic 8y ago
Why would USB boot be less brittle? Seems like if you have a dirty shutdown, the same problems should crop up.
alkonaut 8y ago
I built a pi into an arcade cabinet and switch it off via a power switch only bevause I felt it would be easier to just replace cards now and then than to make some soft-shutdown signal from the switch or similar. After thousands of cycles I still have no issues with it. Could it be that when only running emulators the system just doesn’t write much and without writing the there isn’t much corruption?
forty 8y ago
What I do with my RPi 1, is to put the rootfs in a USB drive and have the SD card read only, with only kernel on it. This has always been possible.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
tau255 8y ago
I had many problems with my RPi2 not booting after reboot. I had to unplug it, get SD card out, fsck and clean dirty bit and hope that it would boot. Got to making backup image every week. I had some unstable power (not affecting any other home electronics) and was looking in some UPS hat but opted to go security DVR way. Bought 7Ah battery and 70W buffer PSU[1] and DC-DC 12V to 5V supply[2]. Could not be more happy. Random problems with SD cards are gone. Only thing to add is some battery voltage sensing to gracefully shutdown RPi in case of longer power outage. Thus, I can tell that many problems with RPi may come from inadequate PSU. 1. I have similar https://www.meanwell.com/webapp/product/search.aspx?prod=SCP-75 https://www.meanwell.com/webapp/product/search.aspx?prod=SCP... 2. https://www.meanwell.com/webapp/product/search.aspx?prod=SD-25 https://www.meanwell.com/webapp/product/search.aspx?prod=SD-...
- Rotareti 8y ago
  If you need UPS you can put a simple USB battery between the charger and your Pi. Works like a charm. My Pi has been making hourly backups of 3 machines in my home network without a single reboot/intervention for 347 days.
abawany 8y ago
I believe the Alpine Linux install for the RPi runs in memory with ability to call `lbu_commit` to update the SD card. I haven't tried it yet but hopefully will have it going by tomorrow.
alinspired 8y ago
look into changing power supply, RPI is quite picky

Theizestooke 8y ago

I had a similar experience with my raspberry pi, and the only alternative I found was to use a banana pi with sata.

FredFS456 8y ago

Yes, https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/msd.md https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry... You can also PXE boot without an SD card, which may be best for file system durability.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

moftz 8y ago

You still need an SD card in there but all it needs is a bootloader and a config file that allows booting from USB. You can make the /boot partition read only so there's no chance of it being screwed up. SD cards do suck but at least they are cheap enough now that you can keep some low capacity ones with bootloaders installed on hand.

noonespecial 8y ago
No longer true. I've got several 3s as NAS's running exclusively off their USB drives.
Florin_Andrei 8y ago
> You still need an SD card in there Not true anymore.
wolrah 8y ago
Pi 2 requires a permanent SD card as its built-in bootloader does not support network booting. It does not support USB booting. Pi 3 B has support for both USB and network booting in its bootloader, but they are disabled by default. They are turned on by modifying some OTP configuration bits, which is a permanent change. Once set the SD card is no longer required. Pi 3 B+ has network and USB booting enabled by default. Presumably Pi 3 A+ will support USB booting out of the box, who knows it it'll also support USB ethernet adapters for PXE.

bipson 8y ago

SD-card corruption is a real problem on RPi (see OpenHAB forums). Supposedly the SD-card driver is not the greatest which together with the system's design makes writes fail silently. This cost is half a day once, since we did not understand what was going on with a config not being persisted over reboots. Mounting root read only and only writing explicitly through the "ro/re" scripts helps a lot and should be the default IMO. The biggest issue some people have with RPis though, is their hackish software, e.g. the kernel. This has become better apparently, but it always was a shame that you couldn't just run a generic kernel/distro. I had good experiences with the BeagleBoneBlack, they come with eMMC and quite a few smart additions (e.g. a power button). Twice as expensive though.

stdclass 8y ago
That one bit me really hard today. We're using hundreds of raspberry's as digital signage devices and before deploying them I checked a few of them and found out that sometimes the source files of the app were empty. After a lot of headscratching and googling we boiled it down to a write delay to the SD card. If you do echo "test" > test.txt and power off the device like 5 sec. after, and power it on again, there was a file called test.txt with 0 bytes. I'm still baffled how something like this can be a common problem especially since raspberry pi usage is so widespread
- gubby 8y ago
  When you say you powered it off, was that a safe shutdown or did you just pull the power? Most file system drivers delay writes, I suspect some variant of your test (if it was unsafe shutdown) could be reproduced on almost any system.
  - stdclass 8y ago
    It was an unsafe shutdown, meaning I just pulled the plug. But it was at least several seconds after saving it. I've never seen behaviour like this before.
    - 8y ago

kup0 8y ago

May not be related to your particular issue, but many instances I have seen where people report SD corruption were due to running the Pi off of USB hub/port power only (essentially underpowered) instead of from a wall plug -> USB power adapter. Been running daily for a couple of years now as a Pi-hole with no SD corruption (3B+ model). Still using the same card as I had in the beginning as well (Samsung Evo)

H1Supreme 8y ago
I have two that run all the time, and have been for over a year. I access them strictly via SSH, and they're always plugged into the wall. So, you may be on to something. That said, I do agree with OP's dislike of SD cards. I've had more than my share go bad in other devices.
- kup0 8y ago
  True, I would much prefer eMMC at a minimum (or a SATA connector and/or USB3 port that could boot an SSD and take advantage of its speed). I would definitely pay extra for these types of features vs. having to use SD
giobox 8y ago
This is indeed an issue, many usb 2 style chargers only provide 500ma per port, the Pi 3 is recommended for use with 2.5A power supplies. The official FAQ calls this out as well. Even many wall chargers don’t provide this - the standard one shipped with an iPhone that many people likely have isn’t powerful enough either. > https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/faqs/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/faqs/
- naikrovek 8y ago
  The only time I have ever witnessed a Pi actually using 2.5A is when it had an official touch screen attached, a camera running, as well as something in each USB port. I think continuous 2.5A is not needed, but is needed for an instant or two, here and there, if you are running headless. All most people would need is a sizeable capacitor across the input power pins, perhaps. Power supplies (people buying cheap ones, or being supplied with cheap ones -- looking at you, Amazon raspi kit sellers) are the number one source of failures that I have encountered with the pi. A good power supply is a lot more expensive than a cheap one, and people are reluctant to invest in a $20 supply when a $5 one has the same rating, so I can't blame anyone for that other than the sellers.

learc83 8y ago

About 5 years ago, I was running a startup that had Raspberry Pis (we really need a better plural) deployed to numerous customers, and SD card corruption was a big problem. If I remember correctly the problem generally happened when there was a power loss during writes to the SD card. I ended up creating a RAM disk and only writing to that. Once every 5 minutes or so I would flush anything that needed to be permanent to a partition on the SD card. And once every hour I'd save anything really important to an s3 bucket. SQLite also performed much better running in memory than it did directly from on the SD card. That mostly solved the problem, but I still shipped every unit with an extra SD card and instructions on swapping it out just in case.

zck 8y ago
> ...Raspberry Pis (we really need a better plural)... Raspberry Tau comes to mind. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_(geometry)#Tau_proposals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_(geometry)#Tau_proposals). It could mean just two Raspberry Pis, or I guess any amount more than one.
- babypuncher 8y ago
  Raspberry Pii
  - ColanR 8y ago
    Raspberry Pi^N
    - reaperducer 8y ago
      Raspberry πs?
XCSme 8y ago
Raspberry Piss sounds fine to me.
1000units 8y ago
They are Raspberries Pi.

robotmay 8y ago

Urgh we have a fleet of Pi units and this is a common issue for us, particularly in buildings with dodgy power supplies. I've got a Beaglebone Black to test out as a gradual replacement, as that has enough built-in storage for us to use.

zemnl 8y ago

Where I work we have many PI 1 and PI 3 in our facility. They have been running for almost 3 years, 24/7, 365 days a year. We got a few instances of corrupted cards so, about 6 months ago, in order to reduce writes on the cards, we decided to reduce logging done by our software running on them, and they have been working perfectly since then.

acdanger 8y ago
Curious, where do you work? I’ve not come across anyone else using RPIs at work.

KindOne 8y ago

Consumer grade SD cards are crap. Try some industrial grade. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16776344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16776344

pulse7 8y ago

First: Your SD cards are most probably not destroyed, but have corrupt file system due to the unsafe shutdown. Second: You can boot from USB with no micro SD with latest firmware. RPI will look first for SD card and then try to boot from USB if no SD card is found. You can even set a one-time-programmable (OTP) bit to skip SD card lookup.

andyidsinga 8y ago
yep -- I've had this exact issue on zero w - corrupt FS, but not physically destroyed.
- andyidsinga 8y ago
  fwiw - as an addendum to that comment - I like using S3 to get my data off the zero w ASAP. ..then corrupt os etc doesn't cause too much down time and data loss.
  - jws 8y ago
    If you store your data under /run (or /var/run) your district will probably put it on a RAM disk. You’ll lose it in a crash, but you won’t be writing to the SD card and provoking it to corrupt in that crash. If you then adjust your systemd journal to not write very often you have eliminated most of your SD writes. The remote sensor systems I run lose power from time to time during the year, sometimes once a day. I’d say each time there used to be something like a 0.1% to 1% chance of corruption. Since I’ve moved to /run and a slower journal I haven’t lost an SD card[1]. Thus far it seems I have at least an order of magnitude improvement. [1] Well, I had a wind turbine tower collapse in an inaccessible location. The raspberry pi is in a lake now, but it can’t have gone far so I don’t call it “lost”. I’ll dive and recover it in the spring. That camera/sensor has spent a couple months underwater before. In fact, I’ve had three systems end up underwater for months and all the SD cards have been fine when recovered.
    - ageofwant 8y ago
      Mate, seems you have your data recovery issues licked. Perhaps now is the time to spend some time on the structural integrity of your windmills :-)

forinti 8y ago

I have several pis and never lost a card except for two I broke because I opened the case without taking them out first.

naikrovek 8y ago

Folks have associated corrupt SD cards to overclocking, all the way to stating outright that overclocking will corrupt your SD card 100% of the time, if used long enough. So, if you're overclocking, don't do that if you're using SD cards. With Pi firmware newer than late 2016 (if I recall) you can write a file to an SD card that sets a bit in NVRAM somewhere telling it to boot to USB from that point onwards, and then you can operate without that SD card or any other going forward. Thumb drives are usually faster and more durable than SD cards.

Florin_Andrei 8y ago

My internet router / firewall / VPN / DHCP / DNS at home is an RPi 3 booting from a USB drive permanently plugged into it. Google search how to do it.

heywire 8y ago

Somehow I've been super lucky. I've got a Pi B+ that has been running nonstop in my garage for years as a security camera. It doesn't have any kind of battery backup, though power outages here are pretty rare. I've also got a rev 1 model B set up with an RTLSDR dongle to log readings from my gas meter. Same situation.

monochromatic 8y ago

Why would USB boot be less brittle? Seems like if you have a dirty shutdown, the same problems should crop up.

alkonaut 8y ago

I built a pi into an arcade cabinet and switch it off via a power switch only bevause I felt it would be easier to just replace cards now and then than to make some soft-shutdown signal from the switch or similar. After thousands of cycles I still have no issues with it. Could it be that when only running emulators the system just doesn’t write much and without writing the there isn’t much corruption?

forty 8y ago

What I do with my RPi 1, is to put the rootfs in a USB drive and have the SD card read only, with only kernel on it. This has always been possible.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

tau255 8y ago

I had many problems with my RPi2 not booting after reboot. I had to unplug it, get SD card out, fsck and clean dirty bit and hope that it would boot. Got to making backup image every week. I had some unstable power (not affecting any other home electronics) and was looking in some UPS hat but opted to go security DVR way. Bought 7Ah battery and 70W buffer PSU[1] and DC-DC 12V to 5V supply[2]. Could not be more happy. Random problems with SD cards are gone. Only thing to add is some battery voltage sensing to gracefully shutdown RPi in case of longer power outage. Thus, I can tell that many problems with RPi may come from inadequate PSU. 1. I have similar https://www.meanwell.com/webapp/product/search.aspx?prod=SCP-75 https://www.meanwell.com/webapp/product/search.aspx?prod=SCP... 2. https://www.meanwell.com/webapp/product/search.aspx?prod=SD-25 https://www.meanwell.com/webapp/product/search.aspx?prod=SD-...

Rotareti 8y ago
If you need UPS you can put a simple USB battery between the charger and your Pi. Works like a charm. My Pi has been making hourly backups of 3 machines in my home network without a single reboot/intervention for 347 days.

abawany 8y ago

I believe the Alpine Linux install for the RPi runs in memory with ability to call `lbu_commit` to update the SD card. I haven't tried it yet but hopefully will have it going by tomorrow.

alinspired 8y ago

look into changing power supply, RPI is quite picky