MagicMirror Forum
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Unsolved
    • Solved
    • MagicMirror² Repository
    • Documentation
    • 3rd-Party-Modules
    • Donate
    • Discord
    • Register
    • Login
    A New Chapter for MagicMirror: The Community Takes the Lead
    Read the statement by Michael Teeuw here.

    dead SD-card every aprox. 6 months

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Hardware
    19 Posts 10 Posters 6.7k Views 12 Watching
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • zdenekZ Offline
      zdenek
      last edited by

      hi all
      what do u do use for store MM? I’ve tried USB and it was slow. I’ve bought about 5 different micro SD cards (Kingston, …) but after 3-8 months, when I did restart, the RPi doesn’t start at all. Some “error” with mounting or something (fatal error…). For me the only solution was reinstall (recovery, reinstall Jessie and reinstall MM). What’s wrong? Too many access to SD card and cause fo that damage?
      Any recommendation?

      thanks
      Zdeněk

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • buzzkcB Offline
        buzzkc
        last edited by

        Had that happen just last week, did a backup of the card using win32diskimager after it was restored.

        I’m looking at setting up a read-only os to play around with and configure myself… https://medium.com/swlh/make-your-raspberry-pi-file-system-read-only-raspbian-buster-c558694de79

        Darren

        My Build: https://forum.magicmirror.builders/topic/11153/new-non-mirror

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • S Offline
          sdetweil
          last edited by

          I have one system (physical location.) that eats sd cards too Pi or odroid hardware doesn’t matter…
          haven’t figured out the cause yet

          Sam

          How to add modules

          learning how to use browser developers window for css changes

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • M Offline
            MadScientist
            last edited by

            I use the cheapest SSD I could get for my Pi at that time. It’s running non-stop for 2 years without any issues. You can get 120GB SSD’s for less than 20€. A SATA-USB adapter costs around 2€ from China. Maybe that’s an option for you.
            SD cards are not designed to be permanently written to. They wear out too fast.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • zdenekZ Offline
              zdenek
              last edited by

              @MadScientist thx, sounds great, i’ll try that

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • M Offline
                marvin424 Project Sponsor
                last edited by

                Hi Zdeněk,
                SD cards have limited write cycles so it’s just a question of time when your pi will not start.

                To increase their life, all manufactures have implemented an internal algorithm which uses different physical sectors when writing data to the SD-Card, see wear leveling.

                You can help your hardware if you “oversize” the SD-Card, avoid ram discs and swap partitions.
                I am using a 16GB SD-Card even though just 4GB is used by the system. It’s running now for more than 4 years without any trouble.

                Brgds, Michael…

                zdenekZ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • zdenekZ Offline
                  zdenek @marvin424
                  last edited by

                  @marvin424 that’s really weird. I’m also using 16 cards, in both my mirrors (one is for testing) a in both I’ve had to replace card in about 6 months max. Maybe I’m using to many modules, maybe there is al lot of writes on card… I’ll try SSD

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • A Offline
                    almliden
                    last edited by

                    I know this is an old thread, but hope someone finds this helpful.

                    1. Use a proper power source, one reason for SD-cards to wear out fast is that the RPi doesn’t receive enough power to actually perform the writes and therefore writes bad data which corrupts the card. Depending on which model it is it might need more power. Since I switched to better power supplies I haven’t had a dead SD-card for quite a while, so it seem to have an impact.

                    2. Use RPi-images that writes to /tmpfs, or configure them to write temporary data to RAM to reduce wear on the SD-card.

                    3. Since it hasn’t been mentioned before in this thread, avoid powering off the device by removing power since this could cancel an ongoing write which potentially could corrupt the card. If you need to power it off, do it properly.

                    SergeS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                    • SergeS Offline
                      Serge @almliden
                      last edited by

                      @almliden said in dead SD-card every aprox. 6 months:

                      Use RPi-images that writes to /tmpfs, or configure them to write temporary data to RAM to reduce wear on the SD-card.

                      How to do that?

                      MoreLinuxM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • MoreLinuxM Offline
                        MoreLinux @Serge
                        last edited by MoreLinux

                        @Serge said in dead SD-card every aprox. 6 months:

                        @almliden said in dead SD-card every aprox. 6 months:

                        Use RPi-images that writes to /tmpfs, or configure them to write temporary data to RAM to reduce wear on the SD-card.

                        How to do that?

                        As root user, edit the file /etc/fstab and add the following lines:

                        tmpfs    /tmp    tmpfs    defaults,noatime,nosuid,size=100m    0 0
                        tmpfs    /var/tmp    tmpfs    defaults,noatime,nosuid,size=30m    0 0
                        tmpfs    /var/log    tmpfs    defaults,noatime,nosuid,mode=0755,size=100m    0 0
                        tmpfs    /var/run    tmpfs    defaults,noatime,nosuid,mode=0755,size=2m    0 0
                        tmpfs    /var/spool/mqueue    tmpfs    defaults,noatime,nosuid,mode=0700,gid=12,size=30m    0 0
                        
                        

                        Now most of the write intensive files write to the Raspberry PI’s ram.

                        Disable the swap file, as it can be write intensive too. First check if you have swap activated with the command:

                        free -h
                        

                        If your total swap is 0B, you are good, if not, execute the following commands:

                        dphys-swapfile swapoff
                        dphys-swapfile uninstall
                        systemctl disable dphys-swapfile
                        

                        Now the command activated with the command:

                        free -h
                        

                        should tell you that you are not using the swap file anymore.

                        P 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • 1
                        • 2
                        • 1 / 2
                        • First post
                          Last post
                        Enjoying MagicMirror? Please consider a donation!
                        MagicMirror created by Michael Teeuw.
                        Forum managed by Sam, technical setup by Karsten.
                        This forum is using NodeBB as its core | Contributors
                        Contact | Privacy Policy