4 ms·

I've had trouble sourcing reliable SD cards for these SBCs. I have had the Le Potato, ODROIDs, RasPis. And they will generally work really well 98% of the tim

I've had trouble sourcing reliable SD cards for these SBCs. I have had the Le Potato, ODROIDs, RasPis. And they will generally work really well 98% of the time. But I keep them in a closet and I hate that I need to service them once a year or so. I tried buying SD cards from several different retailers and never got reliable results like from SATA SSDs (or even rotating disks it seems). I eventually just bought an intel NUC which I saw as a big defeat but also a remarkably practical solution.

NotYourLawyer 4y ago
SD cards are flaky in general.
mikepurvis 4y ago
Can you network boot a Raspi? This source seems to think so, as of the 3B+, anyway: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/network-boot-raspberry-pi-without-microsd/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/network-boot-raspberry-pi-with... I guess it requires them to be on wired network, but if they're in a closet, that's probably the case anyway.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  Yep, I've done network boot with mine. It's a lot easier these days since you don't have to manually generate an initramfs with the modules.
paraselene_ 4y ago
What cards have you tried? If you stick with general-use mSD card these days they'll most likely be TLC. The issue mostly is they don't* support TRIM unlike an SSD, and they use bottom-of-the-barrel flash chips (cause consumer grade, pricing is important here). Pony up a bit more cash for "high endurance" grade (mostly MLC), or even industrial SLC cards at a much higher price point. My current roster for my small pi4 cluster is a mix of Samsung Pro Endurance, SanDisk High Endurance and Kioxia High Endurance. So far they've been working pretty great for me. Last time I checked they're about $15-25 a pop, which isn't cheap but not that bad either. I've been meaning to checkout SanDisk's max endurance which supposedly has much better write cycles, which I'll probably do after the card in my dashcam dies. *On SBCs you could do something *like* trim, but it's not as straight forward, and support depends on the controller of the card wildly.
arglebargle123 4y ago
I've given up on SD cards for general purpose OS disk storage, I use small (≤16GB) SD cards for boot and small mSATA or m.2 SSDs in USB3 enclosures for everything else. Performance and reliability are drastically better, SMART gives you a heads up when a drive starts lotlike it will need replacement, cost isn't even much of an issue if you source your SSDs from fleaBay.

NotYourLawyer 4y ago

SD cards are flaky in general.

mikepurvis 4y ago

Can you network boot a Raspi? This source seems to think so, as of the 3B+, anyway: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/network-boot-raspberry-pi-without-microsd/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/network-boot-raspberry-pi-with... I guess it requires them to be on wired network, but if they're in a closet, that's probably the case anyway.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
Yep, I've done network boot with mine. It's a lot easier these days since you don't have to manually generate an initramfs with the modules.

paraselene_ 4y ago

What cards have you tried? If you stick with general-use mSD card these days they'll most likely be TLC. The issue mostly is they don't* support TRIM unlike an SSD, and they use bottom-of-the-barrel flash chips (cause consumer grade, pricing is important here). Pony up a bit more cash for "high endurance" grade (mostly MLC), or even industrial SLC cards at a much higher price point. My current roster for my small pi4 cluster is a mix of Samsung Pro Endurance, SanDisk High Endurance and Kioxia High Endurance. So far they've been working pretty great for me. Last time I checked they're about $15-25 a pop, which isn't cheap but not that bad either. I've been meaning to checkout SanDisk's max endurance which supposedly has much better write cycles, which I'll probably do after the card in my dashcam dies. *On SBCs you could do something *like* trim, but it's not as straight forward, and support depends on the controller of the card wildly.

arglebargle123 4y ago

I've given up on SD cards for general purpose OS disk storage, I use small (≤16GB) SD cards for boot and small mSATA or m.2 SSDs in USB3 enclosures for everything else. Performance and reliability are drastically better, SMART gives you a heads up when a drive starts lotlike it will need replacement, cost isn't even much of an issue if you source your SSDs from fleaBay.