You can also set them up so they don’t write to the SD once everything is set.  
SD’s will last forever like this.  Basically read only and RAM disk. 

Bill Dailey

Negativity always wins the short game. But positivity wins the long game. - 
Gary Vaynerchuk

Don’t be easy to understand, 
Be impossible to misunderstand 
- Steve Sims

> On Dec 8, 2021, at 3:27 PM, Nick Sayer via time-nuts 
> <time-nuts@lists.febo.com> wrote:
> 
> I forget where I saw it, but my understanding is that the big issue is 
> finding SD cards that can perform whole-disk wear leveling, like proper SSDs 
> do. Apparently, the WD purple series do, according to the e-mail thread I 
> read that I forgot where. Someone contacted WD and got a confirmation that 
> these really do have whole-disk wear leveling. Given that they’re targeting 
> surveillance cameras, it seems reasonable.
> 
>>> On Dec 7, 2021, at 6:09 AM, John Sloan <jsl...@diag.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> In this application RPis seem to last for many years - in others where we
>>> use the SD-card (e.g. influxdb or similar) they seem to regularly fail in
>>> 1-2 years, requiring an reformat or new SD-card. An RPi or similar with a
>>> more robust SSD/M2 drive would be good.
>> 
>> I’ve had the same experience with the SD cards.
>> 
>> At least the most recent Raspberry Pis (e.g. the 4B) support firmware to 
>> boot from USB with just a little configuration effort. I just recently 
>> starting playing with this, booting a RPi 4B from a USB-attached Samsung T5 
>> SSD. It seems to work mostly fine (caveat: see below). For other reasons, 
>> I’ve been running a RPi-specific version of Linux MATE, but Raspbian should 
>> work okay too. (I tried the RPi-specific image of Ubuntu, since I run Ubuntu 
>> on my Intel machines, but was not terribly impressed; slow interactive 
>> response.)
>> 
>> One thing I did run into: if I try to plug too many USB devices in along 
>> with the SSD - e.g. in my case a mouse, keyboard, and GPS dongle - the 
>> system crashes because the SSD USB connection resets. It seems to be a power 
>> problem; I solved it with an external powered USB hub, leaving the SSD on a 
>> USB port on the RPi.
>> 
>> :John
>> 
>> --
>> J. L. Sloan             Digital Aggregates Corporation
>> +1.303.489.5178         3440 Youngfield Street
>> mailto:jsl...@diag.com  #209
>> http://www.diag.com     Wheat Ridge CO 80033 USA
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@lists.febo.com -- To unsubscribe send an 
>> email to time-nuts-le...@lists.febo.com
>> To unsubscribe, go to and follow the instructions there.
> _______________________________________________
> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@lists.febo.com -- To unsubscribe send an 
> email to time-nuts-le...@lists.febo.com
> To unsubscribe, go to and follow the instructions there.
_______________________________________________
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@lists.febo.com -- To unsubscribe send an 
email to time-nuts-le...@lists.febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to and follow the instructions there.

Reply via email to