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You can get an SD card with 0.5TB capacity on it for USD$30, what storage needs do you foresee? Also these tend to be used where weight is an issue, so, why do
by lsb 6y ago
You can get an SD card with 0.5TB capacity on it for USD$30, what storage needs do you foresee? Also these tend to be used where weight is an issue, so, why do you want to lug around a huge disk?
- MisterTea 6y agoSD cards are too slow to be of practical use as a general purpose disk. They're fine when you have a very predictable workload that does not involve a lot of disk IO.
- cjbconnor 6y agoNearly all SD cards that I've used in Pis and other SBCs have died unpredictably in the past, so I've pretty much given up on using them
- Drdrdrq 6y agoSame here. I now run them read only.
- moftz 6y agoI have a special SD card made up that has all of the correct boot configs set and a small script to update everything and set up the Pi for PXE boot. After everything is configured, I take out the SD card and let it just pull boot images over the network. My main home server serves everything up over tftp. The only downside is that you can't get this to work over wifi. The wifi Pis get read only SD cards that are all configured the same so it's easy to reimage a new one if the card dies.
- megous 6y agoUsing f2fs and setting up the SW on my SBCs to not write data needlessly to SD card all the time (some programs are really bad at this), and having a very high quality power supply and cabling was enough to make my boards work for years on a single SD card. Some are at 4 years currently and still work fine. I'm using Sandisk only, since a few years ago, because it's the only manufacturer that allows me to verify online whether the card I bought is genuine and provides A1 rated cards at the same time. Experience with about 20 boards.
- novok 6y agoWe shouldn't have to do that or special USB boot things that don't integrate well with extra cables sticking out of the form factor.
- adrianstoll 6y agoSamsung provides authentication software for their sd cards too.
- znpy 6y agodoes it run on linux or do i need windows to run that? because if windows is needed then sandisk can get a chunk of my salary.
- megous 6y agoIt's a windows tool.
- megous 6y agoNow that's interesting. I have a few dead samsung uSD cards, that I'd check for genuineness, if possible. I suspect they might have been a cheap clone. https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools/ https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/... I guess too little too late. None of the 4 dead Samsung cards I could find have the V mark (too old for that), required for validation, and they probably started adding support for regular EVO cards just a year ago or so.
- wyldfire 6y agoThis seemed to be such a frequent problem that I have up on ARM SBCs (despite how cool they are). Bought a cheap NUC with a disk and a BIOS and it is working like a champ - boots every time. I probably paid a little more but it's enough for my needs - a simple login and (occasional) DLNA server.
- paulcarroty 6y agoNUCs costs much more than Pi, even used.
- wyldfire 6y agoIt costs more upfront, but it's worth it because I don't have to spend my time investigating why it's not working. Also, when comparing costs you should take into account things like enclosure, power supply, as card(s) etc. I'd say I probably paid around $250 or so for the NUC and a SODIMM and I had a SATA boot disk already. I had previously owned ODROID, libre computer (le potato), and Pi(s). These were probably in the ballpark of $80-$120 each, when including all the necessary equipment.
- paulcarroty 6y agoAgree on point paid more for features, but x2.5 price is debatable here.
- richardcrossley 6y agoI bought a cheap used ultra small form factor PC with an i5, 8GB of RAM, all for less than 200 USD. It even included a licensed copy of Windows 7 Pro, which I don't use.
- btreecat 6y agoHow about _reliable_ storage needs?
- numpad0 6y agoSD in itself isn't technically unreliable. Lots of smartphones do just fine with eMMC, which is same thing as microSD card except in nonstandard IC chip form thus can't carry SD branding.
- monocasa 6y agoPractically they end up being really different. SD Cards end up being bottom of the barrel flash chips (even from the 'good' brands), whereas eMMC uses flash good enough that you can count on it being non replaceable. You want "industrial" cards from a vendor tailored to the space. I wouldn't trust even those new industrial sandisk cards.
- jschwartzi 6y agoYeah as someone who has deployed SD-based and eMMC-based systems in industrial spaces, SD cards are hot garbage compared to eMMC and I would strongly recommend not using them in anything that needs to be reliable.
- jandrese 6y agoThere should be a market for people who will pay extra for SD cards that: 1. Absolutely don't lie about their capacity 2. Have a reasonable MTBF 3. Are reliably fast But instead we're all dealing with an industry that raced to the bottom years ago. I'm concerned that the same mentality will infect the eMMC market eventually and it will become impossible to find quality parts after a couple of years.
- monocasa 6y agoWhat you're asking for does exist in the industrial market (and I'm skeptical of those 'industrial' branded sandisk cards). They still use pseudo SLC (storing one bit in every flash cell as 00(0) or 11(1) and correcting up or down on read back). They also will work with you so you can track BOM changes as they internally change the cards so you can track failure rates. They also give you access to tons of internal perf counters so you can do preventative maintenance (ie. swap the card if it's getting long in the tooth). They also just generally treat you as a business partner rather than a consumer, wrt support and what have you. It costs a pretty penny though. $40 for a 2GB non micro card was the last quote I got.
- jwandborg 6y agoAn M.2 SSD is not huge. In my experience, SD cards are way slower than SSDs for random access operations.
- stjohnswarts 6y agocompiling on SSD is so slow. I once compiled an rpi kernel on rpi just for fun and it took forever. Cross compiling is the only way to go for now, unless you only have a small project.
- jandrese 6y agoRaspberry Pis tend to be skimpy on memory. If it starts swapping it's going to be slow even on a fast SSD.
- hajile 6y agoI suspect they don't necessarily mean spinning platters. A SATA port also allows the connection of an SSD which is almost always a huge boost in usability over SD slots. The fact that you can add a large platter for a small NAS solution is just a nice option. I'd far rather see a 2x PCIe port that could be used for whatever you wanted.
- mrweasel 6y agoI would love to see a Micro-ATX og Mini-ITX board with an ARM or RISC-V CPU, with PCIe ports and storage connectors. There are ARM boards, but they're a little pricy.
- brucehoult 6y agohttps://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive-unmatched https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive-unmatched PCIe, 16 GB DDR4, two M.2 (one for storage, one WIFI), quad core 1.5 GHz (same cores as this board, but twice as many)
- unwind 6y agoAt $679, that's more than "a little pricey" to me at least.
- brucehoult 6y agoExisting and shipping at all is the first step. Low price comes later, with volume.
- unwind 6y agoThat makes sense and sounds logical, but (and I'm certainly no historian) didn't the Raspberry Pi debut at a low price?
- imtringued 6y ago
- mrweasel 6y agoThe SD card on the Raspberry Pi is 50 MBps max, if I recall. That's a little slow if you want to use it as a small desktop. I don't want to lug around anything, I want it to sit behind my monitor. Also an M.2 drive isn't that big, it could fit in many existing cases.
- jug 6y agoCheap, slow (as an operating system medium at least), and unreliable. They're the modern day floppy disk. The one upside is that the space is cheap and quite plentiful.
- adamc 6y agoSD cards are kind of slow, though.