Are SD cards more reliable than USB flash drives?

[Kenny202]

Having continual problems with USB type Flash cards corrupting. Seems inevitable at some point they will crap out.  I always have a back up so not the end of the world I guess but would a large SD card be more reliable? The one you would put in a camera. I would put it in a card reader and plug in USB. I have larger proper storage drives but have had trouble with them too and not really practical for travelling. Usually use 128gb and make sure I never fill more than 80%

[gargamon]

Buy better usb sticks. The cheap ones don't last long sometimes. 

[flyingtlger]

USB sticks for sure but buy from a reputable company.

[NotEinstein]

I use USB sticks as the system disk on my Raspberry Pis. If I keep the usage below 50% they last for 3+ years despite being constantly written to.

As others have suggested, use a decent brand from a reputable supplier - I use SanDisk Ultra Flair from JIB as they handle the warranty well.

[Mickeymaus]

Which brand do you use and how do they die? Did you try to repair the file system with Windows? Did you try to reformat them? 

 

I have many SD Cards (almost 20) and use them a lot. For instance all movies that I play on my TV are transferred to SD Cards from my tablet or computer. And every movie has GB of data. And they are also in my phone and tablet where I write very many data to them. 

 

So far I had only 1 problem. I cannot write to this 128 GB SD Card anymore. But the data still can be read. This might sound great but is a problem. I still have warranty but since confidential data are on this SD Card too (was used in the tablet) I cannot ask for an exchange. And there is no way to delete the data. 

[OneMoreFarang]

27 minutes ago, NotEinstein said:

I use USB sticks as the system disk on my Raspberry Pis.

I don't know the exact statistic, but many people have problems with long term usage of SD-Cards with Raspberry Pis. 

For that reason, SSDs used with long running Raspberry Pis projects, i.e. home automation.

 

You can buy small reliable external SSDs like this:

[Kenny202]

29 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

I don't know the exact statistic, but many people have problems with long term usage of SD-Cards with Raspberry Pis. 

For that reason, SSDs used with long running Raspberry Pis projects, i.e. home automation.

 

You can buy small reliable external SSDs like this:

That little SSD looks excellent. Do you know the name or series? They must have gotten a lot smaller. It would still be an electronic memory right? Not an actual disk drive

[NotEinstein]

18 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

I don't know the exact statistic, but many people have problems with long term usage of SD-Cards with Raspberry Pis. 

For that reason, SSDs used with long running Raspberry Pis projects, i.e. home automation.

Horses for courses.

I like to keep my systems efficient and cost effective. I take daily database backups to my old-school hard disk based NAS and have some more 32GB Ultra Flairs configured and ready for a failure. Obviously much cheaper than SSDs, which are of a larger capacity.

[Kenny202]

31 minutes ago, Mickeymaus said:

Which brand do you use and how do they die? Did you try to repair the file system with Windows? Did you try to reformat them? 

 

I have many SD Cards (almost 20) and use them a lot. For instance all movies that I play on my TV are transferred to SD Cards from my tablet or computer. And every movie has GB of data. And they are also in my phone and tablet where I write very many data to them. 

 

So far I had only 1 problem. I cannot write to this 128 GB SD Card anymore. But the data still can be read. This might sound great but is a problem. I still have warranty but since confidential data are on this SD Card too (was used in the tablet) I cannot ask for an exchange. And there is no way to delete the data. 

I always buy Sandisk from a reputable shop like Banana IT so they are genuine. I don't buy the really expensive ones though as I was told they are no better re reliability etc... Only faster. Not sure if true or not. They usually for no apparent reason start coming up with errors. Often still have a chance to get to the files and copy them somewhere else but often a total write off. Have used Windows repair tools and other recovery tools but never much use in my opinion

[Gaccha]

The USB are far more likely to corrupt than SD or SSD.

 

I have had several USB sticks corrupt on me, but by using freely available software I was always able to recover the contents.

 

You might have to test several recovery software products to find one that works in that particular situation. The last time I used them I used some German software that was only in German, but it did work.

[NotEinstein]

13 minutes ago, Kenny202 said:

That little SSD looks excellent. Do you know the name or series? They must have gotten a lot smaller. It would still be an electronic memory right? Not an actual disk drive

https://www.jib.co.th/web/product/product_search/0?str_search=ssd sandisk&cate_id[]=

[recom273]

42 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

I don't know the exact statistic, but many people have problems with long term usage of SD-Cards with Raspberry Pis. 

For that reason, SSDs used with long running Raspberry Pis projects, i.e. home automation.

 

You can buy small reliable external SSDs like this:

People say this, I only use Sandisc ultra, and I have never lost one, despite homebridge writing to the sd card. I have 4x pi’s in a 1U rack, I make images of the whole cards and backup the data from

time to time just to be on the safe side, so far, so good. 

[OneMoreFarang]

2 hours ago, Kenny202 said:

That little SSD looks excellent. Do you know the name or series? They must have gotten a lot smaller. It would still be an electronic memory right? Not an actual disk drive

SANDISK PORTABLE SSD

อุปกรณ์จัดเก็บข้อมูล (STORAGE & MEMORY CARD ) (jib.co.th)

 

[OneMoreFarang]

2 hours ago, NotEinstein said:

Horses for courses.

I like to keep my systems efficient and cost effective. I take daily database backups to my old-school hard disk based NAS and have some more 32GB Ultra Flairs configured and ready for a failure. Obviously much cheaper than SSDs, which are of a larger capacity.

A 500GB external SSD cost now < 3000 THB.

That shouldn't be an issue.

[OneMoreFarang]

2 hours ago, recom273 said:

People say this, I only use Sandisc ultra, and I have never lost one, despite homebridge writing to the sd card. I have 4x pi’s in a 1U rack, I make images of the whole cards and backup the data from

time to time just to be on the safe side, so far, so good. 

I read about the problem.

And then an SD-Card failed on my test installation.

That was a good reminder for me to never use SD-Cards in a system again which should work 24/7.

[NotEinstein]

11 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

A 500GB external SSD cost now < 3000 THB.

That shouldn't be an issue.

The SanDisk 32GB Ultra Flair I use is 135 baht..........

[KannikaP]

Kingston 32GB USB stick, 10 years old, used regularly to read and write. No problems whatsoever.

Lexar 64 GB SD card in my NUC for backup. No problems in 3 years.

Edited June 23, 2023 by KannikaP

[Maybole]

Cards are easier to lose.