I have a couple of Pis which run all the time, one is the DNS server
for our home LAN the other is a 'NAS' in the garage. So they're on
all the time but not particularly hard worked.

Over the past year or so both of them have failed once with some sort
of corruption of the micro-SD card. Not life-threatening by any means
but quite annoying and both took quite a while (like half a day) to
restore and get back to fully configured and working.

So I'm wondering how to either find extra reliable SD cards or to
change to something else such as a USB disk (on of the two systems is
a Pi 4 so that one at least is easy to boot from USB).

The storage can be tiny by modern standards, a 4Gb SD card would be
perfectly OK.

So what does the panel suggest? Preferably cheap! :-)

--
Chris Green
·
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On 12/12/2021 18:03, Chris Green wrote:

I have a couple of Pis which run all the time, one is the DNS server
for our home LAN the other is a 'NAS' in the garage. So they're on
all the time but not particularly hard worked.

Over the past year or so both of them have failed once with some sort
of corruption of the micro-SD card. Not life-threatening by any means
but quite annoying and both took quite a while (like half a day) to
restore and get back to fully configured and working.

So I'm wondering how to either find extra reliable SD cards or to
change to something else such as a USB disk (on of the two systems is
a Pi 4 so that one at least is easy to boot from USB).

The storage can be tiny by modern standards, a 4Gb SD card would be
perfectly OK.

So what does the panel suggest? Preferably cheap! :-)

For my music/video system (Pi3), I have 128Mb SD card (FAT, boot)
booting to a 128Gb USB SSD (ext4, root) and a 5Tb powered USB HDD NTFS
as /media. It's been running for years with no problems.
Just changed the cmdline.txt file root=UUID= to point to the SSD partition.

--
Chris Elvidge
England
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On 2021-12-12, Chris Elvidge <chris@mshome.net> wrote:

On 12/12/2021 18:03, Chris Green wrote:

I have a couple of Pis which run all the time, one is the DNS server
for our home LAN the other is a 'NAS' in the garage. So they're on
all the time but not particularly hard worked.

Over the past year or so both of them have failed once with some sort
of corruption of the micro-SD card. Not life-threatening by any means
but quite annoying and both took quite a while (like half a day) to
restore and get back to fully configured and working.

So I'm wondering how to either find extra reliable SD cards or to
change to something else such as a USB disk (on of the two systems is
a Pi 4 so that one at least is easy to boot from USB).

The storage can be tiny by modern standards, a 4Gb SD card would be
perfectly OK.

So what does the panel suggest? Preferably cheap! :-)

For my music/video system (Pi3), I have 128Mb SD card (FAT, boot)
booting to a 128Gb USB SSD (ext4, root) and a 5Tb powered USB HDD NTFS
as /media. It's been running for years with no problems.
Just changed the cmdline.txt file root=UUID= to point to the SSD partition.

Yes I have a home server Pi3B - imap, DNS, NTP, NFS, SMTP, web, syslog,
backup etc server....

19:47 root@mercury:~# uptime
19:47:03 up 641 days, 23:06, 1 user, load average: 0.13, 0.05, 0.15

under a similar scheme, but with a spinning USB HD. The SD card's boot partition is mounted ReadOnly to protect it from corruption, and I keep
a backup copy of the root filesystem of the USB HD on the SD card copied
every week by a script that mounts the SD ext4fs rsyncs then unmounts it
- again to protect the SD card.

If I need to upgrade the OS and there is a chance the boot code might be upgraded I remount that partition readwrite for the upgrade only.

I'm commisioning a Pi4 as a replacement with 2 USB3 Attached HDs. The
extra throughput on USB3 and Gigabit ethernet will make the backups go a
lot quicker. Other things just work a charm.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On Sun, 12 Dec 2021 18:03:45 +0000, Chris Green wrote:

I have a couple of Pis which run all the time, one is the DNS server for
our home LAN the other is a 'NAS' in the garage. So they're on all the
time but not particularly hard worked.

Over the past year or so both of them have failed once with some sort of corruption of the micro-SD card. Not life-threatening by any means but
quite annoying and both took quite a while (like half a day) to restore
and get back to fully configured and working.

A good, reliable way to corrupt an SD card is to have a power outage, or
even just a glitch while the card is being written to. This is part of
the design of SD cards - they were designed to be cheap and are not
really designed to replace an HDD or SDD - the job they were designed for
is one where writing to the card is FAR less frequent than reading it.

Short answer - there is no super-reliable SD card.

Solutions - in no particular order are:

1) Use a cheap SSD, but many of these may also get corrupted
if there's a power fail while the SSD is being written to.

2) build or purchase a small UPS for the Pi. Designs and Pi-HAT UPS
products are available.

3) Assuming that you update the Pi's software every week or so,
Back up the Pi's SD card using rsync. Rsync is reliable, fast
and can write the backup, via the link you use to talk to the
Pi, onto backup media attached to your your main computer(s).
Make the backup immediately before you do the software update.

I use the last approach. Its fast, straight-forward once you've
configured a copy of rsync on the Pi to backup the whole SD card when
requested to do so and configured another copy of rsync on the machine
which will receive the backup to write that to your backup device.

I use a pair of Western Digital Elements USB-connected 1GB hard drives to
act as a two generation backup set, and use then in strict sequence to
make my backups, and keep them in a fire safe when not actually being
used to make a backup.

In fact I back up four computers, weekly, to that week's backup disc
(2 x Fedora laptops, my house server (also Fedora), and an RPi. The 1GB
backup disks have stabilised at 37% full.

If yoyu want a cheaper backup solution, you could always do what I
described but instead of two USB packaged HDDs, use , say, a pair of 16GB
HDDS.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

Chris Green <cl@isbd.net> wrote:

So I'm wondering how to either find extra reliable SD cards or to
change to something else such as a USB disk (on of the two systems is
a Pi 4 so that one at least is easy to boot from USB).

The storage can be tiny by modern standards, a 4Gb SD card would be
perfectly OK.

So what does the panel suggest? Preferably cheap! :-)

This page (not mine) discusses some hardware and software options
for improved reliability: https://kevinwlocke.com/bits/2018/04/28/rpi-sd-card-storage-considerations/

I like the idea of mounting the root fs as read-only and running
in RAM. I use Tiny Core Linux for that, where it's the default
(though not done the same way as in Raspbian). OpenWRT also has
their own scheme for minimising wear to the flash, because cheap
routers often have built-in flash chips which are only designed for
occasional writes.
https://openwrt.org/docs/techref/filesystems

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

Chris Green <cl@isbd.net> wrote:

So I'm wondering how to either find extra reliable SD cards or to
change to something else such as a USB disk (on of the two systems is
a Pi 4 so that one at least is easy to boot from USB).

My go-to USB SSD is a Sandisk Extreme Pro, which is actually a SATA SSD
in a USB stick form factor. Not the cheapest, but proper SSD reliability.

If size/power isn't a constraint, any SATA SSD or HDD in a SATA-USB case
would do.

Another option is to go with a Pi Compute Module with EMMC. EMMC is
product grade storage, as fitted to laptops and tablets. There are some
basic carrier boards for the CM4 for not-much: https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2196.html
(although many sacrifice USB 3)

Alternatively the CM4 has PCIe and an NVMe SSD can be used, if you have a suitable carrier board. NVMe boot is now supported: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2021/raspberry-pi-can-boot-nvme-ssds-now
and there are starting to become available carrier boards with M.2 slots: https://linuxgizmos.com/open-spec-piunora-and-mirkopc-carriers-for-rpi-cm4-feature-m-2-for-nvme/

So what does the panel suggest? Preferably cheap! :-)

Oh, ignore all the above then :)

Theo
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

Jim Jackson <jj@franjam.org.uk> wrote:

On 2021-12-12, Chris Elvidge <chris@mshome.net> wrote:

On 12/12/2021 18:03, Chris Green wrote:

I have a couple of Pis which run all the time, one is the DNS server
for our home LAN the other is a 'NAS' in the garage. So they're on
all the time but not particularly hard worked.

Over the past year or so both of them have failed once with some sort
of corruption of the micro-SD card. Not life-threatening by any means
but quite annoying and both took quite a while (like half a day) to
restore and get back to fully configured and working.

So I'm wondering how to either find extra reliable SD cards or to
change to something else such as a USB disk (on of the two systems is
a Pi 4 so that one at least is easy to boot from USB).

The storage can be tiny by modern standards, a 4Gb SD card would be
perfectly OK.

So what does the panel suggest? Preferably cheap! :-)

For my music/video system (Pi3), I have 128Mb SD card (FAT, boot)
booting to a 128Gb USB SSD (ext4, root) and a 5Tb powered USB HDD NTFS
as /media. It's been running for years with no problems.
Just changed the cmdline.txt file root=UUID= to point to the SSD partition.

Yes I have a home server Pi3B - imap, DNS, NTP, NFS, SMTP, web, syslog, backup etc server....

19:47 root@mercury:~# uptime
19:47:03 up 641 days, 23:06, 1 user, load average: 0.13, 0.05, 0.15

under a similar scheme, but with a spinning USB HD. The SD card's boot partition is mounted ReadOnly to protect it from corruption, and I keep
a backup copy of the root filesystem of the USB HD on the SD card copied every week by a script that mounts the SD ext4fs rsyncs then unmounts it
- again to protect the SD card.

If I need to upgrade the OS and there is a chance the boot code might be upgraded I remount that partition readwrite for the upgrade only.

I'm commisioning a Pi4 as a replacement with 2 USB3 Attached HDs. The
extra throughput on USB3 and Gigabit ethernet will make the backups go a
lot quicker. Other things just work a charm.

OP here. My 'NAS' is an early Pi 4, only 1Gb memory. It has an 8TB
USB drive as the backup drive and just the standard micro USB as
everything else.

I have backups of everything that's extra/non standard so when it died yesterday it was [fairly] easy to reinstate but I'd prefer not to have
to do it again.
--
Chris Green
·
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

On Sun, 12 Dec 2021 18:03:45 +0000, Chris Green wrote:

I have a couple of Pis which run all the time, one is the DNS server for our home LAN the other is a 'NAS' in the garage. So they're on all the time but not particularly hard worked.

Over the past year or so both of them have failed once with some sort of corruption of the micro-SD card. Not life-threatening by any means but quite annoying and both took quite a while (like half a day) to restore
and get back to fully configured and working.

A good, reliable way to corrupt an SD card is to have a power outage, or
even just a glitch while the card is being written to. This is part of
the design of SD cards - they were designed to be cheap and are not
really designed to replace an HDD or SDD - the job they were designed for
is one where writing to the card is FAR less frequent than reading it.

Short answer - there is no super-reliable SD card.

Solutions - in no particular order are:

1) Use a cheap SSD, but many of these may also get corrupted
if there's a power fail while the SSD is being written to.

Yes, but how do you tell the difference between a 'cheap SSD' and a
USB stick that is essentially just an[other] SD card?

2) build or purchase a small UPS for the Pi. Designs and Pi-HAT UPS
products are available.

That's an idea.

3) Assuming that you update the Pi's software every week or so,
Back up the Pi's SD card using rsync. Rsync is reliable, fast
and can write the backup, via the link you use to talk to the
Pi, onto backup media attached to your your main computer(s).
Make the backup immediately before you do the software update.

All my backups *to* the Pi NAS use rsync already, I use rsync
everywhere. I don't have an image of the Pi software but I can
restore fairly quickly, that's why it only took a few hours to sort
things out when it died.

--
Chris Green
·
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On Sun, 12 Dec 2021 19:55:40 -0000 (UTC), Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> declaimed the following:

I use a pair of Western Digital Elements USB-connected 1GB hard drives to

Are you sure about those units? I would suspect those are 1TB drives.

Even a minimal system (Pi-Star image, no X-window or similar overhead stuff) takes 2GB here, and my "scratch" R-Pi 3B+ has 8GB of a 14GB
partition in use... My smallest accessible drive is a 1TB Seagate (I may
have smaller/old drives in two or three housings in the basement).

pi@rpi3bplus-1:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 14G 8.0G 5.4G 60% /
devtmpfs 436M 0 436M 0% /dev
tmpfs 468M 0 468M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 468M 6.4M 462M 2% /run
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 468M 0 468M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mmcblk0p1 253M 49M 204M 20% /boot
tmpfs 94M 4.0K 94M 1% /run/user/1000
pi@rpi3bplus-1:~$



--
Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN
wlfraed@ix.netcom.com http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/ --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

If I need to upgrade the OS and there is a chance the boot code might be
upgraded I remount that partition readwrite for the upgrade only.

I'm commisioning a Pi4 as a replacement with 2 USB3 Attached HDs. The
extra throughput on USB3 and Gigabit ethernet will make the backups go a
lot quicker. Other things just work a charm.

OP here. My 'NAS' is an early Pi 4, only 1Gb memory. It has an 8TB
USB drive as the backup drive and just the standard micro USB as
everything else.

I'd suggest partitioning the 8TB disk to have a root partition.
Essentially a copy of the root image on the SD card, then do what
someone else said, change the cmdline.txt file to specify the uuid of
this partition at the root file system.

Alter /etc/fstab to make /boot on the SD card to be mounted readonly.
Don't mount anything alse on the SDcard by default.

If the power goes unexpectedly then as the SD card has no writes is
won't get corrupted. THe root partition on the spinner will get dirty,
but under most circumstances it won't be corrupted too badly. Disconnet
plug into another linux box - run fsck to correct problems - return
to pi and all should be ok.

I have backups of everything that's extra/non standard so when it died yesterday it was [fairly] easy to reinstate but I'd prefer not to have
to do it again.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

Hello Chris!

12 Dec 21 18:03, you wrote to All:

a Pi 4 so that one at least is easy to boot from USB).

The storage can be tiny by modern standards, a 4Gb SD card would be perfectly OK.

So what does the panel suggest? Preferably cheap! :-)

When using SSD cards, do not use the cheapest ypou can find. Buy one that
is really oversised and run "sudo fstrim -av" at regular intervals, e.g.
once a week.

I have 2;280/5006 running for a couple of years now. If I remember well,
I only had to replace the SSD card once. That was before I started using
fsrim.


Kees

Kees
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5--b20180707
* Origin: As for me, all I know is that, I know nothing. (2:280/5003.4)

On Sun, 12 Dec 2021 21:45:32 +0000, Chris Green wrote:

Yes, but how do you tell the difference between a 'cheap SSD' and a USB
stick that is essentially just an[other] SD card?

You dont and cant. Short answer, like for SD cards, only buy them from reputable sources.

I have a SanDisk 128 GB SSD in a Lenovo R16i which just sits there and
does its thing: no problems after several years, the last two spent
running protein folding software 24/7. Its original disk was a Hitachi
120GB HDD that failed at around the 37000 hours mark. So, it was either
fit the SanDisk 128 GB SSD or junk the laptop because its disk interface hardware doesn't support disks of more than 200GB: I know that because it
would not accept a 500GB WD drive and a search of its manual didn't show acceptable replacement disks of over 250GB and, by the time the Hitachi
went titsup you couldn't buy a hard disk smaller than 320GB.

3) Assuming that you update the Pi's software every week or so,
Back up the Pi's SD card using rsync. Rsync is reliable, fast and
can write the backup, via the link you use to talk to the Pi, onto
backup media attached to your your main computer(s). Make the backup
immediately before you do the software update.

All my backups *to* the Pi NAS use rsync already, I use rsync
everywhere. I don't have an image of the Pi software but I can restore fairly quickly, that's why it only took a few hours to sort things out
when it died.

Excellent. rsyncing 'live' disks to a set of at least 2 offline backup
disks, stored offline, preferably in a firesafe or other building is
about as good as it gets.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On Sun, 12 Dec 2021 16:51:31 -0500, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:

Are you sure about those units? I would suspect those are 1TB
drives.

My bad. Of COOURRRSE (cough..cough.. hawk, spit) they are 1TB
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:

On Sun, 12 Dec 2021 21:45:32 +0000, Chris Green wrote:

Yes, but how do you tell the difference between a 'cheap SSD' and a USB stick that is essentially just an[other] SD card?

You dont and cant. Short answer, like for SD cards, only buy them from reputable sources.

I have a SanDisk 128 GB SSD in a Lenovo R16i which just sits there and
does its thing: no problems after several years, the last two spent
running protein folding software 24/7. Its original disk was a Hitachi
120GB HDD that failed at around the 37000 hours mark. So, it was either
fit the SanDisk 128 GB SSD or junk the laptop because its disk interface hardware doesn't support disks of more than 200GB: I know that because it would not accept a 500GB WD drive and a search of its manual didn't show acceptable replacement disks of over 250GB and, by the time the Hitachi
went titsup you couldn't buy a hard disk smaller than 320GB.

3) Assuming that you update the Pi's software every week or so,
Back up the Pi's SD card using rsync. Rsync is reliable, fast and
can write the backup, via the link you use to talk to the Pi, onto
backup media attached to your your main computer(s). Make the backup
immediately before you do the software update.

All my backups *to* the Pi NAS use rsync already, I use rsync
everywhere. I don't have an image of the Pi software but I can restore fairly quickly, that's why it only took a few hours to sort things out
when it died.

Excellent. rsyncing 'live' disks to a set of at least 2 offline backup
disks, stored offline, preferably in a firesafe or other building is
about as good as it gets.

Exactly, the Pi 'NAS' that started this thread is in my garage which
is a fair way away from the house. The wired ethernet connection is
buried now (it used to be draped through the trees!). I do inremental
backups of all my systems to the Pi backup system using rsync.

There's very little 'extra' software on the Pi NAS, it's "out of the
box" Raspios Lite with just syncthing and postfix added so rebuilding
from scratch is pretty trivial (but does take a bit of time).

--
Chris Green
·
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

Jim Jackson <jj@franjam.org.uk> wrote:

If I need to upgrade the OS and there is a chance the boot code might be >> upgraded I remount that partition readwrite for the upgrade only.

I'm commisioning a Pi4 as a replacement with 2 USB3 Attached HDs. The
extra throughput on USB3 and Gigabit ethernet will make the backups go a >> lot quicker. Other things just work a charm.

OP here. My 'NAS' is an early Pi 4, only 1Gb memory. It has an 8TB
USB drive as the backup drive and just the standard micro USB as
everything else.

I'd suggest partitioning the 8TB disk to have a root partition.
Essentially a copy of the root image on the SD card, then do what
someone else said, change the cmdline.txt file to specify the uuid of
this partition at the root file system.

Yes, that's certainly one possible way to go. I guess I can
re-partition it to have the rootfs partition at 'the end' so it won't
take for ever to do it.

Alter /etc/fstab to make /boot on the SD card to be mounted readonly.
Don't mount anything alse on the SDcard by default.

If the power goes unexpectedly then as the SD card has no writes is
won't get corrupted. THe root partition on the spinner will get dirty,
but under most circumstances it won't be corrupted too badly. Disconnet
plug into another linux box - run fsck to correct problems - return
to pi and all should be ok.

It'll have to actually happen before one knows exactly how it will
react but, as you say, it should be OK. Other (Linux) systems around
here with spinnig disks have survived power failures without issues
(as have the Pis actually).

My Pi failures have both 'just happened' not as a result of a power
failure.

--
Chris Green
·
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

Kees van Eeten <nospam.Kees.van.Eeten@p4.f5003.n280.z2.fidonet.org> wrote:

Hello Chris!

12 Dec 21 18:03, you wrote to All:

a Pi 4 so that one at least is easy to boot from USB).

The storage can be tiny by modern standards, a 4Gb SD card would be perfectly OK.

So what does the panel suggest? Preferably cheap! :-)

When using SSD cards, do not use the cheapest ypou can find. Buy one that
is really oversised and run "sudo fstrim -av" at regular intervals, e.g.
once a week.

I have 2;280/5006 running for a couple of years now. If I remember well,
I only had to replace the SSD card once. That was before I started using
fsrim.

Doesn't running fstrim effectively try and outguess the SSD's built in
wear levelling?

--
Chris Green
·
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On 12/12/2021 18:03, Chris Green wrote:

I have a couple of Pis which run all the time, one is the DNS server
for our home LAN the other is a 'NAS' in the garage. So they're on
all the time but not particularly hard worked.

If on all the time the DNS server could simply use RAM disk for all
moving data.

If writing is why the SD is failing

Over the past year or so both of them have failed once with some sort
of corruption of the micro-SD card. Not life-threatening by any means
but quite annoying and both took quite a while (like half a day) to
restore and get back to fully configured and working.

So I'm wondering how to either find extra reliable SD cards or to
change to something else such as a USB disk (on of the two systems is
a Pi 4 so that one at least is easy to boot from USB).

The storage can be tiny by modern standards, a 4Gb SD card would be
perfectly OK.

So what does the panel suggest? Preferably cheap! :-)

--
Any fool can believe in principles - and most of them do!

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

Re: Re: Need a reliable 'disk' drive - what/how to choose?
By: Martin Gregorie to Chris Green on Sun Dec 12 2021 07:55 pm

of the micro-SD card. Not life-threatening by any means but
quite annoying and both took quite a while (like half a day) to restore and get back to fully configured and working.

A good, reliable way to corrupt an SD card is to have a power outage, or even just a glitch while the card is being written to. This is part of
the design of SD cards - they were designed to be cheap and are not
really designed to replace an HDD or SDD - the job they were designed for
is one where writing to the card is FAR less frequent than reading it.

Short answer - there is no super-reliable SD card.

Solutions - in no particular order are:

To your list of solutons, I'd like to add

4) Use an operating system that does not write to the SD card once it has booted.
(Such as PiCore)

--
gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken
--- SBBSecho 3.14-Linux
* Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (1:123/115)

On Mon, 13 Dec 2021 08:56:47 +0000, Chris Green wrote:

Kees van Eeten <nospam.Kees.van.Eeten@p4.f5003.n280.z2.fidonet.org> wrote:

Hello Chris!

12 Dec 21 18:03, you wrote to All:

a Pi 4 so that one at least is easy to boot from USB).

The storage can be tiny by modern standards, a 4Gb SD card would be
perfectly OK.

So what does the panel suggest? Preferably cheap! :-)

When using SSD cards, do not use the cheapest ypou can find. Buy one that >> is really oversised and run "sudo fstrim -av" at regular intervals, e.g.
once a week.

I have 2;280/5006 running for a couple of years now. If I remember well,
I only had to replace the SSD card once. That was before I started using
fsrim.

Doesn't running fstrim effectively try and outguess the SSD's built in
wear levelling?

No, it gives it the info needed to do a better job.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

Chris Green wrote:

I have a couple of Pis which run all the time, one is the DNS server
for our home LAN the other is a 'NAS' in the garage.  So they're on
all the time but not particularly hard worked.

there are extention boards to attach hard drives - take one and put two SSDs into raid on the NAS. Configure the NAS to support FTP and use the other
one diskless.
The Pi4 boots well from FTP when EEPROM is written appropriately.
The not Pi4 needs a small SDHC card (64 or 128MB) with the boot partition
and config to boot from network. This can be unmounted after boot too.

Also there are Li-Ion batteries with power monitor that can be used as UPS
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 12/12/2021 21:45, Chris Green wrote:

Yes, but how do you tell the difference between a 'cheap SSD' and a
USB stick that is essentially just an[other] SD card?

All SSDs are better than a USB stick or SD card. They have much better controllers, work at SATA speeds and have better wear levelling. They
are by far the most reliable form of storage for the Pi.

A USB stick may be no better than an SD card, but if you go for one with
a USB3.1 interface (regardless of what you will plug it in to), it will generally have a better controller than a USB 2 or 3.0 interface. Don't
go for the tiny low profile sticks as they often have thermal problems,
a full size stick preferably with a metal case are far better.

---druck
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