> My microSDs have already handled more lifetime writes than all IDE HDDs I ever had combined. In practice it's hard to tell without real statistics. I've had

> My microSDs have already handled more lifetime writes than all IDE HDDs I ever had combined. In practice it's hard to tell without real statistics. I've had two Raspberry Pi setups running off microSD cards for many years now, as actively used CUPS hosts for printers. No problems whatsoever. On the other hand I have some other Pi setups where one of them suddenly suffered an extremely hot microSD card and I just had to yank it out (I was logged in at the time and the system froze). Same type microSD as the other two (Sandisk). The card was gone, the Pi survived. That got me a bit nervous and I used an SSD instead afterwards. So, it's all anecdotal - two microSD cards working flawlessly for many years, another failing catastrophically after a relatively short time. Usage pattern approximately the same.