Pi life expectancy

Hardware
21

I'm using/running different SBCs, but my experience is very similar, I only had issues with them when the PSUs or SD cards were having problems. SD cards are known to die, it's only a matter of time for their cells to wear out. But you can extend their lifespan by minimizing the amount of data written to them, or even using them completely in read-only mode.

I found these guides helpful when researching the topic:

1 Like
22

I have have been doing this for years also. Not only is it much faster, and less prone to failure, it doesn't take long to clone the whole drive to a spare.

I do this before any major updates, then swap to the cloned disk to do the updates, so it's easy to roll back.

Swapping disks reduces wear and small SSD are just as cheap as SD cards these days.

23

I have one running a bit over five years with no issues. Seems odd one would die so soon. Maybe the environment??

24

I have some rpi3 that are running in outdoor rated enclosures going on 7 years now? rpi 4 for about 6? (i guess just after they came out). Only SD cards needing replaced so far.

25

Was reading through this thread last night before bed. Get to work today and see that my pi has stopped its API requests.

As far as I can tell the cellular signal dropped or the hotspot reset. Reconnect to the hotspot, transmit my data and reboot for good measure…

Pi doesn’t boot back up, can’t establish ssh through wireless or wired. Several power cycles later pull the Sid card, extract my flow files and reflash the card.

Running again now as expected. Very strange occurrence though. First time I’ve had it happen, and this particular pi wasn’t in operation all that long <1y.

32GB pny card, perhaps it will need something better.

26

@DWoodlock Did you check the logs? Any recent auto updates? Are you just running bog standard?

27

I did not. In retrospect I probably should have, but didn’t occur to me at the time. I have been aware of the SD card risk, just this is the first time it’s actually been an issue for me.

I was just thrilled I was able to read the card and get my flows file out because I had forgotten to back it up after the most recent change.