SBCs: It's time to ditch microSD

Are microSD cards days numbered on Raspberry Pi 5? Raspberry Pi has a new M.2 HAT for the Pi 5, but there are many others. Which one's best?
Guides and other videos I mentioned:
- Geekworm 4-drive NVMe review on Level2Jeff: • Tiny Pi NAS: It's impo...
- Explaining Computers Network Install video: • Raspberry Pi 5 Network...
- Pi PCIe database - Pi 5 HATs: pipci.jeffgeerling.com/hats
- Set PCIe Gen 3 speed on the Pi 5: www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/202...
Devices I mentioned (some links are affiliate links):
- Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+: www.raspberrypi.com/products/...
- Pineboards (many devices mentioned): pineboards.io
- Cytron MakerDisk NVMe: www.cytron.io/p-nvme-2242-b-p...
- Pimoroni NVMe BASE: shop.pimoroni.com/products/nv...
- GeeekPi N04 M.2 NVMe HAT: amzn.to/4bGWpPP
- GeeekPi N05 M.2 NVMe HAT: amzn.to/3V2enXv
- USB RIITOP NVMe to USB Docking Station: amzn.to/4beEIav
- Raspberry Pi NOOBS microSD card: amzn.to/3K3iQmu
- Geekworm X1011 4-drive NVMe board: geekworm.com/products/x1011
- Argon ONE V3 M.2 NVMe PCIe case: amzn.to/3QFLZHN
- (Let me know in the comments if I missed something!)
Support me on Patreon: / geerlingguy
Sponsor me on GitHub: github.com/sponsors/geerlingguy
Merch: redshirtjeff.com
2nd Channel: / @geerlingengineering
3rd Channel: / @level2jeff
00:00 - NVMe's time to shine
00:35 - Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+
01:49 - Alternatives have more interesting uses
02:10 - Ditch microSD
03:26 - What makes NVMe so good?
05:12 - Better performance and compatibility
06:29 - Multi-drive HATs - compromises
07:50 - Opportunities and a Pi 500?

[@octonoozle]

I only use 3.5" floppy

[@Log4Jake]

Same I own about 300 floppys they are great.

[@hankhulator5007]

I prefer 5"1/4 or even 8" floppies ;-p)

[@frogz]

@@hankhulator5007 i keep a couple 8 inch floppies, they make good padding to protect my hdds in a old floppy disk box

[@kolbyking2315]

3.5" floppy disk and 5" hard drive?

[@cirkulx]

I only use 8" IBM Internal Floppy.

[@timaidley7801]

Whenever Jeff says "Until next time, I'm Jeff Geerling", I wonder who he will become next time. So far, it's always been Jeff Geerling.

[@JeffGeerling]

So far...

[@truthdoesnotexist]

you haven't yet seen the wrath of Geff Jeerling

[@jackthompson6296]

this isn’t even his final form

[@HungarianPenguin]

Well, I think his previous form was a Jeffling. But dont quote me on that.

[@derrickjac]

Thank god.

[@gigaherz_]

Just starting the video. My take before watching: microSD card is to the Pi, what the floppy drive was to the original IBM PC. As soon as Hard Drives were available, people mostly stopped booting off the floppies, and started using them as external storage and for transferring files between computers. If I had anything newer than a Pi3B+, I would be booting off a proper SSD instead of the microSD.

[@IanZamojc]

The microSDs are still useful for swapping between several different operating systems if you've only got a single pi.

[@ernestgalvan9037]

RPi 3B+ can boot an SSD through a USB3-SATA adapter. It’s been a thing for some two years now.

[@Max24871]

I've said this all along and I'll continue pounding this home: Buy sdcard suitable for the job and they'll last just as long and be much cheaper. For the Raspberry Pi (or any sbc) that means only sdcards with an application rating of preferably A2, and you're golden. The performance difference to a real ssd is pretty small but if you don't need much space sdcards are much cheaper. A2 rated sdcards are much better than most people are used to, it's very much worth a try. The problem with people recommending all kitted out raspberry pi's is that once you reach the price of a cheap x86 based mini pc the pi just can't compete there

[@gigaherz_]

@@ernestgalvan9037 Has it? I thought the SoC of the rpi3 didn't allow alternate boot methods.

[@TWX1138]

Eh. When I had roommates I had my Linux box still using Loadlin to boot, no MBR on the disk, so that after I booted off floppy I'd take the floppy out and put it away. This way when I shut the computer down no one else could boot it up in a misguided attempt to use it since it would stop right after the POST.

[@christian104]

That segue to the sponsor was S+ tier.

[@LordDragon1965]

It was L-tier...L for Linus

[@Gorja239]

more than funny :D

[@senfdame528]

@@LordDragon1965 S+ for Linus (S)ebastian ;)

[@MichaelOfRohan]

I dont know how I figured segue was spelled, but that wasnt it lol

[@veli86]

@@MichaelOfRohanTIL it is not “segway”.

[@YouShisha1393]

Next Pi should have builtin m.2 header.

[@johnr3936]

This one should've.

[@Tomydirium]

I am shocked that RPi5 does not have boot option for nvme by default

[@burnte]

@@Tomydiriumyou can boot from nvme easily. There’s no so card in my pi5.

[@Tomydirium]

@@burnte you can, but you have to edit internal pi config files (eeprom config, iirc)

[@TheBroz]

I don’t agree, the price of the Pi is already getting bloated.

[@Supermunch2000]

The troll at 2:17 got me SO GOOD! 😆🤣😆🤣😆

[@hiero.]

I flinched the way I do in an LTT video

[@sumimasensorrygomen]

definitely got me rushing up reaching for the mouse to skkip

[@user-vd8oy1wh4r]

@@sumimasensorrygomen SponsorBlock to the rescue!

[@RafaGmod]

bro i almost fell from my chair HAHAHHAHA

[@john13211]

@@hiero. yea he said it with the same vibes of ltt

[@roblatour3511]

I really like the way you referenced Explaining Computers; it shows real maturity to point people to other youtubers for related info

[@jfolz]

Imagine a world where instead of 6 displays and cameras, the Pi5 had an nvme slot and didn't require active cooling.

[@liamely802]

It doesn't require active cooling. It will not harm the board to run without it, and will still outperform the pi4b iirc.

[@balsalmalberto8086]

Imagine if the Pi5 went back to their $35 starting price

[@ChristopherHailey]

The Pi Zero 2 pretty much covers what the original Pi could do, a 1gb version would close the gap. The 5 is so much more than the original SBC but I think you're right, there is still a desire for low end versions.

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

imagine a world where Rpi made all of their own chips instead of Broadcomm's subpar SOCs

[@c1ph3rpunk]

Imagine a world where I don’t need a Pi anymore. Oh yea, 2020. I’m Pi-less now.

[@piorewrzece]

Segway to our sponsor joke WAS GOLD ♥

[@Aruneh]

"It's time to ditch microSD - for Raspberry Pi" There, fixed the title to be less clickbaity.

[@DragoNate]

*title still not updated...

[@kizurura]

It's so careless of a creator's part to say such a thing as Micro SD becomes straight up obsolete without specifying for what purpose it became obsolete. And he even hearted your comment. Is he shameless or is it just autoheart?

[@frogz]

@@kizurura shameless clickbait title, i approve because he did it somehow tastefully/shamelessly at the same time

[@nimoy007]

​@@kizurura Have you watched any of Jeff's videos before? It is definitely neither of those reasons.

[@brodriguez11000]

Need MicroSD for sneaking out government secrets. NVMe too big.

[@christophmuller3511]

I am still angry that the raspberry pi foundation didn’t place an M.2 slot on the bottom of the pi, this flat flex solution is finicky.

[@JeffGeerling]

Definitely finicky. I do wonder if they'll find a way to put M.2 directly on a future Pi 6.

[@nikobellic570]

M.2 ports consume too much power for the pi's compact power design, I've heard

[@mlindholm]

@@nikobellic570so how do these M.2 hats work...don't they pull power from the PCIe interface or GPIO pins? Some may take an auxiliary power connection, but not all would.

[@christophmuller3511]

@@nikobellic570 the port is just a connector routing PCIe to the board. If power would be the issue all the M.2 hats would not work either.

[@MeTube3]

Put $10 on the price. I would pay it.

[@peterblaikie3744]

Jeff I liked how to mentioned Chris at Explaining Computers. Between the both of you I learned enough to get my PI4 running and enjoy all the tips and advice as well as the product reviews.

[@JeffGeerling]

Love his videos, it's a Sunday tradition!

[@MarkEmeryPhotography]

For older Pi, I’ve used AllNet Rock Pi 4 eMMC to USD Board.

[@JeffGeerling]

USB I presume ;) It would be great if I could find a board that would convert my old eMMC drives to US Dollars though!

[@nicholas4839]

​@@JeffGeerlingI would be rich if I could a board like that too

[@nimoy007]

​​@@JeffGeerling Yeah, but the eMMC conversion rate is really low right now, so I'm invested in flash cards right now :P Also, OP, don't edit your comment, or you'll lose the context for these comments as well as Jeff's "heart."

[@justme5384]

​@@JeffGeerlinghe's probably meaning eMMC to uSD

[@CoruscationsOfIneptitude]

​@@JeffGeerling Hello! Thank you for the videos andI hope that you are well recovered. Are NVME drives faster than GPU RAM? Would there be any benefit to such a drive as a sort of buffer for video frames, a way to store 60 frames or so, so that then the 'buffer' and GPU dump frames hopefully smoothing framerates. Am I off on a silly tangent. Ta!

[@stephenvalente3296]

First reaction was that I found it odd when the email from Pi Hut and Pimoroni arrived this morning that the Pi Foundation had ignored the 2280 format drives in favour of the more expensive 2230 & 2242 sizes. Compact yes, but generally harder to find over the established 2280 format drives from Samsung, WD, etc.

[@JeffGeerling]

They're a little more rare, but I think more will come to market since the size is seeing a comeback with portable gaming handhelds and SBCs. I've already seen the launch of four new 2242 size boards, and about 8 2230, in the past two years.

[@stephenvalente3296]

@@JeffGeerling About £70-£80 in the UK currently for a 1Tb model (2230), so a slight premium. Just couldn't fathom why they left out the 2280 option initially. Still going to order one of course!

[@AudreyRobinel]

I had the same though as you did. I feel like an issue with raspis now is that they really want to keep compatibility between all the hats and stuff. I wouldn't mind if they changed the form factor, broke compatibility but had a 2280 nvme slot on the bottom, perhaps another format for the gpios, normal sized hdmi ports, and all ports on one side. Or I don't know, release a model C with all of these. Now the issue is with how cheap n100 computers are getting, compared to the price hike of the pis. Justifed Price hike for sure, but renders it less competitive. If I need gpio stuff, I am almost always better with a pi Pico, and have it either communicate via usb with the host computer, or via WiFi or Bluetooth. The one pi that is still in a very unique spot is the zero line. Hard to find anything else that runs Linux that well, for so cheap, low power, and with gpio.

[@Tweak42]

If history serves, it will be similar to how full sized SD cards were gradually supplanted by microSD. Manufactures are already ramping up offerings for handheld gaming devices like the Steamdeck.

[@HVDynamo]

@@AudreyRobinel Honestly, I've kind of thought they should branch into two versions of the Pi, Keep the current standard the same (aside from going back to one large HDMI instead of two, and bring back the analog audio jack). Then they could release a Pi Pro or something of the like that's maybe twice the size or a little bit larger to accommodate the additional ports that may be needed. They kind of did the opposite with the Pi Zero, it would be nice to see them take it a little the other direction without going too far. That larger one could include more/faster PCI-E lanes with a built in M.2, one full size HDMI and one mini so you still have the option to use two displays, but aren't eating up a ton of room with the second connector while maintaining more standard connection for the first. For the Pro, I'd target $100 to $150 for the board. It's a bit more, but also more capable.

[@dwylhq874]

Perfect timing! We were starting to research this for Pi5 Home Assistant 😍

[@jameswarnock5655]

5:44 I second WD drives not working on the Pi. My first attempt to get my Home Assistant Yellow running on NVMe was nothing but trouble with my WD drive. I bought a Samsung and it worked first try.

[@jackielinde7568]

I clicked on this video expecting Jeff to argue NVMe as a replacement for MicroSD's as a portable drive device. Sadly, that was not the case. Still a very informative video.

[@henryptung]

I mean, arguing about prices per terabyte already misses the point when it comes to Pi boot drives. Most Pis out there aren't using their system for chunky storage, and the advantage of MicroSD isn't cost-per-GB efficiency - it's just cost. You can get 5 64GB MicroSDs for $15, and for people with a ton of embedded Pis and Pi Zeros around the place, that's a strong value proposition. Obviously if you're using your Pi for performance sensitive and storage sensitive work, yeah a MicroSD isn't going to cut it. But if you just want a boot drive to run a daemon or two from RAM, NVMe requires more hardware, more expensive drives, for performance you won't use.

[@award_]

jeff, the sponsor segue troll was hilarious dude!

[@PrograError]

well... he ain't no LTT for sure...

[@teknoman117]

6:43 - there is a low lane count asmedia PCIe gen 3 switch - the ASM2806A. It's the same switch used in the Asus FLASHTOR 6&12 m.2 disk NAS units, along with a number of multi-controller USB and SATA cards. They do use quite a bit more power than gen 2 switches. Most implementations I've seen require heatsinks. I also imagine they cost quite a bit more.

[@allenrogers5415]

Great video! Thinking of creating a travel router and a simple small raid drive for storage. I like to tinker.

[@IanTheWoodchuck]

I'm a big fan of the ArgonONE cases and accessories. The new V3 with NVMe add-on is just such a clean and professional look, and the machined aluminium-alloy direct contact case siphons off heat better than any case I've used that wasn't a tower-cooler design. Plus once it's bundled up, you can still easily access the SSD slot through a heatsink plate on the bottom. My only complaint is that it took just over a month to arrive directly from China because US supplies were unavailable.

[@aquaponieee]

i have a 10 year 8GB microSD card that has traveled with me for generations of phones, and it vaults a lot of memories. it wouldn't feel the same if it was all on the cloud...

[@smika710]

I use the bottom mount pineboard. I have the CannaKit Aluminum case. I put two screws into the hat, and two screws into the case. Added heat sync's to the small chips on the board. And I just 3d printed a tray with holes for the pins, and airflow cutouts that pressure fits the bottom of the aluminum case. It looks good

[@gregspeakman9337]

Nice vid Jeff. I have been using the Pimoroni NVMe base. It works well. Like you mentioned, getting a case is problematic.

[@evanbarnes9984]

The first shot of RPi's own M.2 hat at about 0:47 was so perfect! The image showed that the hat was launched today and already sold out. That's so on brand for Raspberry Pi. "We made this cool new thing! Unfortunately it's vaporware for all but our industrial clients."

[@simpletongeek]

My current setup is Raspi5 in KKSB Official Display Case to make a portable (somewhat thick) pad. Whatever hat in there, must be compatible with the official metal fan, and still fit in the case. Honestly, 300 MBps isn't bad at all. It only comes into question during large data transfer, such as video processing. It's good enough for everything else. ITMT, I have 8 GB RAM + 1 TB microSD. I can set up RAM Disk if I want faster bandwidth. That's good enough for me for now. Although that M2 setup is good for Raspi 500, for sure!

[@brucelytle1144]

I recently got a McUzone MPS2280 POE Nvme board with a Samsung 990EVO memory board. Liking it!

[@Quarky_]

Your closing note is what I have been hoping ever since the Pi 5 was released :)

[@i_Kruti]

2:17 That LINUS style sponsor segway was....!!😂🤣

[@ernestgalvan9037]

RPi5 case with NVMe adapter on bottom. Geekworm Metal Case P580 Geekworm Bottom NVMe x1002

[@Catzzye]

Will the shirt you're wearing be available in that colour on the merch store? :( I really like that orangey gradient, thanks!

[@JeffGeerling]

Yes, very soon! I am working on rebuilding the merch store (with a new way better T-shirt printing company), and hope to have it going by the end of this month. The colors and printing on the shirts is sooo much better now.

[@psychopath_syd]

YAAY! Explaining Computer mentioned

[@LordDragon1965]

References to two of my non-Jeff favorites. Chris and Linus.

[@psychopath_syd]

@@LordDragon1965 if you're referencing to LTT, not following them after their controversy with Gaming Nexus. Jeff, Chris and Explaining Computers seem much more down-to-earth.

[@hicknopunk]

I ditched my wifi and Bluetooth cards to put in m.2s. Put on an external wifi, Bluetooth usb dongle. My little PC is so happy now.

[@gashery]

Was srsly reaching for the mouse at that segue to our... Well played sir, very well played.

[@daanmageddon]

LOL @ those "impedance matched traces"; i might become an old geek, but maybe others remember the "IDE 40 cable" warning your bios might throw back during the time when IDE access became UDMA/66? Not using the right cable didn't allow the new higher transfer rates. The extra connections were just grounded lines between the datalines to prevent crosstalk, a true problem with IDE because the signal is sent in parallel. Amazing how much data we can send over just a couple pairs of wires these days, but it seems there are some old familiar limitations hehe.

[@JeffGeerling]

As always what's old is new! Like my Dad does RF engineering, and a lot of the problems RF engineers deal with are similar to PCB trace issues, because it's all magnets and photons and voodoo magic with electrons, anyway :D

[@StarFox1988]

that "sponsor segue" was hilarious🤣 - but with all the options, it's hard to chose one that I like the most. it'll greatly depend on what I'm wanting to do. HOWEVER, this opened the door wide open for Windows on ARM - I had a ""decent"" experinece with it using a USB to NVME adapter on a 4 with 8GB of RAM but having an NVME on a 5? that little machine will probably do much better.

[@brucehanson4147]

Here I thought I was really killin it with a SATA and a USB3 adapter! Waiting to see if we get a cm5 and what kind of motherboards would be available for that!

[@danieladelodun9547]

1:10 I wish you released this video 2 days ago!! Bought a 22pin 0.5 FFC to connect a Pi Zero to an Arducam camera with a ‘micro’/zero sized camera connector. Wasn’t a pi branded cable just a random FFC… Didn’t think to check this!

[@Dante-420]

What a coincidence! I was just looking into a low-stakes backup (for data I don't care about) and thought about using a pi zero-like device with an sd card, but decided on a cm4 board with an nvme slot instead! I think I'll still get an SD card for some redundancy though (I don't need fast writes, or reads for that matter)

[@bahamutbbob]

Got it. Getting m.2 adapters for all of my SD card things. Everdrives, x station, 3DS.....

[@hadron2]

I was able to keep using the case fan with an NVME hat by leaving it loose between the hat and the board. temps are still good lol.

[@JeffGeerling]

Heh, if it works it works!

[@hadron2]

@@JeffGeerling Now that's a mantra for success!

[@maluraq]

The real comparison would be CFExpress which is NVMe but designed to be handled and swapped. SD and MicroSD are safe to carry in your pockets or a bag, whereas NVMe drives have a lot of exposed circuitry and aren't designed to be as physically resilliant.

[@paladingeorge6098]

I don't have the official nvme hat, but I just bought an Argon40 Neo 5 NVME case and it works beautifully with a 1TB Samsung 990! Just in case anybody is wondering. I kind of figured running a Pi 5 natively on an NVME drive was going to be awesome but I am genuinely impressed with how good a solution it is.

[@rogerlevasseur397]

Been using a Pi 3 with a 512G microSD (in a USB port) as my in-home webserver. Won't name the brand but its supposed to be a good brand. After 18 months I started detecting checksum errors (all the contents are indexed with a checksum). I look forward to getting a Pi 5 and outfitting it with an M.2 to hold that content, and be useful for other activities, such as backup/NAS activity, either from the M.2, or a USB disk drive.

[@Digital_Notions]

Completely agree that NVMe M.2 is the way forward. However, anything over 2TB requires some hoops to jump through to get it to boot due to the MBR limitations in the default Raspberry Pi boot images.

[@JeffGeerling]

Yeah; that's some thing a few of us are starting to run into when booting with more expensive/exotic NVMe storage. Even some larger SATA drives plugged in via USB!

[@OldMadScientist]

Watching the changes in NVME and Pi boards reminds me of the journey from 8088, 286, 386, 486 based PCs.

[@CaseyChaos1984]

Pineberry bottom with Crucial P5 plus 500gb has worked perfectly out of the box for me for over 4 months. Just in case anyone came to the comments looking for compatible options.

[@Jorge.ALXNDR]

I love the yellow color of your shirt, and the red on the mug. all the colors on your videos makes me a little euforic idkw

[@shadowownz3137]

@Jeff i pretty much enjoy your videos, especially at work, i find them very relaxing! Any thoughts on the new HAT+ official NVMe m.2 from the Pi foundation? I was expecting a bottom one to be release as well, perhaps with 2280 support, do you have any news on that matter?

[@energyideas]

Thanks. Agree, Pi 500 w/NVME will be sweet desktop replacement. Dual NVME Hat could support an AI solution like Coral. Hope bottleneck chip for duals is solved above 2x.

[@AmyGrrl78]

I really hope when the Raspberry Pi 6 comes out they just include an NVMe slot on the bottom of the board. While still keeping that PCIe connector for expansion.

[@RickRolling-tc7vb]

Thanks Jeff, it just keeps getting better. I do love my shitty little computers. Hope you're keeping well and your studio is keeping you amused - on the quality of the output it seems to be doing a decent job.

[@martyburgess341]

I used an already setup os and copied it to a 1Tb nvme. Then I loaded it up and went into pi config to extend the partition. It runs like a mid range laptop.Super Snappy.

[@RonLaws]

The root filesystem suddenly going readonly with no indication to the OS until it runs out of kernel disk cache is my favorite SDCard failure mode. I still use the SDCard for the UEFI Bios for the Pi4 so it can boot more generic ARM OS''s from a USB SSD, At least this way i can use the cheapest, smallest SD Card and not worry since it's more of a write once read many affair and is pretty much inactive after boot, so no worry about wearing it out.

[@JeffGeerling]

Yeah failure modes for microSD are no fun :(

[@uss-dh7909]

I was wondering if this was going to be a thing that would catch on... About five years ago now I purchased my first rspi and put pihole on it. Worked great for a couple months, then didn't. After some investigation, ended up having to rebuild everything from zero, and it happened again a few months later. Put it away for the summer and tried again when school started, and it did it again. Determined the SD cards were the issue and ended up building a trueNAS box with pihole in the background, no issues, happy.

[@hawaiianryan1890]

Kudos to the single-board computer makers who include an M.2 slot for an NVMe SSD and make their boards big enough to mount one. For example, the Odroid M1S.

[@schalkpretorius]

Cool idea to play with is to see how many HDDs you can connect to one Pi5 using those m.2 to SATA adaptors. If it's even possible that would be a great for small media servers.

[@absurdbird3556]

Also, a 128gb MicroSD costs the same as a 128GB SSD (around £15), which via SATA or USB blows SD out of the water, doesn't burn out as quickly and can be booted from easily (and automatically since Pi 4B).

[@NormanLyon]

SD card reliability is the biggest reason I've stopped using SBCs, even though it's simplicity was originally a plus (even at expense of performance). NVMe might fix the shortcoming, but by the time I factor SSD into the cost of an SBC/PC/container, I haven't had SBC come out on top in a long time.

[@JeffGeerling]

Depends on the use case but mini PCs have come a long way for the money!

[@Warlock_UK]

Just ordered the Pimoroni one as I have a full size nvme drive laying around; it's too slow for putting in a full computer but for the PI it'll hit max speed.

[@o0shad0oo]

I switched to Orange Pi 5 for my display machines, before the RPi5 was released, and I'm fond of them. Takes NVMe drives without needing a hat.

[@tubeDude48]

Thanks for the info. Jeff

[@JohnDunne001]

I can't beleive I'm yet to buy a raspberry pi 5 - got a ton of CM4's and 4b's.... I need an excuse to buy one and not be wasteful!!

[@JeffGeerling]

Haha well good on you for not contributing to ewaste by buying something you don't have a need for! CM4 is still a great little machine. And I run a couple 4B's where I need a little speed but not something crazy like Pi 5.

[@teslamax5529]

Me too. But I have 4x CM4, 2x Pi 4, and way too much of other things. 😅

[@JohnDunne001]

@@JeffGeerling Same. I run my gitea server, OMV NAS, Pi Hole and Home assistant on seperate CM4's and a couple of Retro emulators. They run great but I might get a Pi 5 for a 4 player stand up cabinet I'm planning on building, with a 42 inch TV. A Pi 5 might lend it's self nicely for that project!

[@JohnDunne001]

@@teslamax5529 I have a huge list of yet to be started projects :D Too many ideas, not enough time. But the Pi 4's were bought for them non the less! I've learnt the lesson!

[@BradClarke]

I bought 4GB and 8GB Pi5s to use with the Pimoroni NVME base. I have a couple Pi4b that run 24x7 (off of Samsung bar USB sticks), but have at least 4 more sitting around unused. Need to put them to work somehow.

[@paulstubbs7678]

For simple projects where there is not a pile of open files, or worse cache & swap type files then SD cards work ok, however with a full functions OS, the storage bandwidth is crazy and they soon die.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

The big benefit and main reason the microSD form factor exists is the size. They are tiny, the size of a fingernail. A 2230 M.2 SSD is about the size of a "full" SD card. But SSDs are much faster. Oh, and it would help to have context in the title. Didn't knew it was about SBCs, expecting something about some sort of adapter module to get an ISSD in my phone or my camera.

[@MNaka-uf9yz]

Back then, I used to call my PI the "SD card eater" and put their MTBF to the test. That's the primary reason i ditched my PI2 for a Rock64 with eMMC then ditched my ARM SBC for a N100 with an nVME SSD, never going back for sure!

[@JeffGeerling]

Hehe, sometimes the power supply can be the culprit too. I've had no issues on Pis behind UPSes with good PoE HATs or the official PSU, but I have had problems with some cheaper PSUs.

[@MNaka-uf9yz]

@@JeffGeerling True, had official PSU too but i believe in my case it was the intensive I/Os on them 😅

[@TechnologyGeek862]

I Don't remember hearing about level 2 Jeff before. Now subbed 😊

[@Genesis8934]

(~) 2:14 I had to go back and double check but I thought I heard a "B" instead of "D" for "how can we Ditch these pesky microsd cards" and was like, whoa! lol 2:18 I love the segue to your sponsor! ;) I wonder if future Pi's will come with a 2230 or similar SFF M.2 drive on the main board? Though maybe they need to get away from the "credit card-sized board" form factor and slightly increase board size. And if the main concern is fitting it into a case... well AFAIK, the cases need to be updated anyway for each raspberry pi version already! (~) 8:27 honestly, I really like your database you've got. I've used and referenced it a few times and found it really useful. It's kinda what I hope LTT Labs turns into rather than joining the blog-o-sphere (atm, I think their site is still just a blog).

[@AJB2K3]

I'm hoping for an RP5 updated version of the Argon EON. I do like the triangular shape of it.

[@iam.jasonhoward]

Since USB boot became an option, I've used micro SD cards less. For the Pi 5, I'm only using SSDs. As Pis get new hardware features, I'm curious how the Pi Foundation and similar organizations will incorporate hardware education into their programming. It's a great time to be a Pi enthusiast.

[@talkashie]

My issues with my Pi were always SD card corruption. I gave up on the platform after never getting the storage to be stable. This was around the Pi 2B days though, so maybe it's time to get back into this. I just wish they weren't so expensive now :(

[@CedroCron]

Thanks for explaining all this Jeff. Much appreciated.

[@lizlewis238]

I really hope the RPi m.2 hat works with their PoE+ hat whenever that comes out (or someone makes a m.2 + PoE+ combo hat) - would be super handy!

[@the-floofy-mew]

i still nab micro sd's as 20 bucks for a 256 is good price. yet i will also still use hdd for game storage as cheep space while failing isn't bad.

[@JeffGeerling]

Not time to ditch your hard drives! :) If you just need some raw storage space, microSD still has its place, it's just not as good for a primary boot drive for an SBC these days!

[@bkucenski]

Yep. I've been waiting for the PI to get proper storage so I could recommend it as something for parents to buy their kids that's cheap and they can tinker with without destroying the family computer. The trick is getting it all put together without costing the same as a Mini PC running Windows which already have m.2 storage and are cheap.

[@annaarthur724]

Hey Jeff. Thx for your video but, for me, it's 12 hours to late, i ordered a pi5 together with a Pimoroni NVMe Base Duo this morning. I had the intention to boot from it instead of the micro sd card. Too bad, however... I will use it now for storage and for the public_html directory of the apache webserver.

[@JeffGeerling]

It will work! Just make sure to update the firmware to the latest. If you have any issues, please file something on the Pi Forums, because the Pi engineers seem to be looking into it now and hopefully will fully support that use case!

[@alanmacdonald5517]

Def keeping my microSD cards for my lightweight < 249g drone. Might keep some for when they release the RPi RC 4-rotor hat 🤔

[@JeffGeerling]

Will the HAT have four rotors that are hats in and of themselves?

[@alanmacdonald5517]

@@JeffGeerling yeah... well... errr....ummmm...It's turtles. All the way down 🤷‍♂️🤔

[@MrWachtus]

I just got my Pi 5 and the Pimoroni NVMe BASE. I flashed Ubuntu on the SSD and everything worked right out of the box.

[@JeffGeerling]

I think I still prefer the Pimoroni design over all others right now, and love they include little rubber bumpers. Between them and Pineboards, all my wish lists are being checked off, one by one :)

[@TehObLiVioUs]

agree my steam deck OLED with 2230, 2 TB drive is amazing

[@RWBHere]

'Until next time, I'm Jeff Geerling.' 🤔 Who will you be, next time? 😉 Thanks for the video.

[@briangoldberg4439]

Jeff, I am so glad that we have you to update on Pi stuff. It feels like they basically abandoned the maker community from a support standpoint right around the release of the Pi4

[@mifraburneo]

Omg… best crossover I’ve seen in a while among KZbinrs! 😂😂

[@robotron1236]

My Orange Pi 3B came with a m.2 slot on the back of it. I use it as a server.

[@JTCF]

Apparently I live in a weird world where non-raspberry accessories and SBCs have much better availability and affordability.

[@ChristopherHailey]

There are lots of different use cases and now we have lots of SBC and minipc options so the Pi does not have to be the only solution for every case. That's what's really opening up the tiny computer world, this reminds me of when microprocessors started coming out in the 70s

[@coronelkittycannon]

The only reason I'm planning on buying a R Pi 5 is the composite video output for a crt build. After that, who knows? Maybe it's time to say goodbye.

[@tin2001]

I couldn't buy a Pi last time I needed one - unavailable in Australia at the time. Now they're just ridiculously expensive for their capabilities. So basically now I just use recycled desktop PCs for anything that needs a "full" OS, and ESP8266 or ESP32 for everything else.

[@jamesh9756]

@@tin2001 The Pi 5 is $5 more for the same RAM as the Pi4. That doesn't seem a particularly large price hike for 2.5x the performance.

[@ChristopherHailey]

@@tin2001 The Pi was never intended to be another desktop, if that's what you want then you want a desktop computer, whether it's a laptop, tower, or minipc.

[@CraigHollabaugh]

Thanks

[@MarcusTheDorkus]

I like that microSD cards allow for removable storage on tiny devices, but I still wish that more devices would use full sized cards. Not only for performance and reliability but also because the full sized cards are easier to handle and harder to lose!

[@JeffGeerling]

SD easier to handle, easier to insert/remove, more room to keep it cool, more room for features like caching, UHS-II/III gives even more speed... so much to like!

[@marklowry4431]

Great video! Is there anywhere to get the better ribbon cables? I have a pi hat with a cheap one, and I'd like to upgrade it.

[@JeffGeerling]

I know Pineboards sells a little pack. Shipping to US is a little much right now.

[@marklowry4431]

@@JeffGeerling Thank you! I'll check it out :)

[@JTCF]

sd card for the "boot drive", nvme for work storage. That's the config I'm going with.

[@JeffGeerling]

Definitely a good option! I'm also thinking of trying out one of the multi-drive boards with one NVMe for boot (smaller drive), and one for storage (more capacity). It won't be blazing fast, but plenty fast for USB file copies, network file copies...

[@ChristopherHailey]

We have large servers that do the initial boot off an SD but that then does the OS boot off a "real" disk

[@Bluestreak589]

Personally I'm liking the Pimoroni NVMe Base. I'd tried one of the Geekworm variants mounted above the Pi 5 which ended up blocking off enough of the Pi's cooling to be an issue. I suspect the official HAT would have similar behavior. The Pimoroni boards mounted under the Pi aren't causing the same temperature issues, or any other issue for that matter.

[@JeffGeerling]

They also have nice little rubber bumpers to hold the Pi on your desk!

[@frankoconnor806]

Thanks Jeff great concise content

[@GeneralZimmer]

I almost mistook this video for an LTT video

[@AlanTwoRings]

No need to be so rude.

[@cenotaph300]

Same here. "A segue to our sponsor..." Not really, but it was a funny jab at LTT!😂

[@metroguevania]

Nah. The name and thumbnail weren't clickbait enough

[@alexanderkaminsky8644]

I think the main problem with nvme is the size, since you need custom hats that most likely will block airflow and take the only pcie slot, I think other manufacturers started adding Emmc storage because it’s small, lightweight and has almost sata speeds at around 330mb/s, I personally will stick to micro sd cards, some have faster speeds now of 300mb/s and hopefully it will run at full speed on the sbc’s.

[@IanZamojc]

I suspect this would be a good option for anyone running a pihole since they tend to write a lot of logs to storage which can shorten the live of SD cards. I had my pihole SD card die recently and that was most likely the cause.

[@JeffGeerling]

Yeah, my current Pi-hole build is a Pi 4 with SATA SSD via USB to SATA adapter. I should probably get that upgraded to Pi 5!

[@Santor-]

What is the most compact NVME adapter for the Pi Zero 2w? Dual for mirroring preferably.

[@hellowallace]

I have a Pi4 with MicroSD running Home Assistant, only a few months later, it showed me how a failed memory card symptom looks like - never seen before. Now it's running a SATA M.2 SSD, no problem so far. However, some other Zigbee devices failed from time to time, so I wouldn't rely on Home Assistant to do anyhting serious. Now looking to reourpose my Pi4.

[@hellterminator]

Here's the thing: While the price per TB might be similar, decent NVMes _start_ at 250GB. I rarely if ever need that sort of capacity for the kind of applications where a Pi is good enough. I can get a high quality 32GB microSD card for quarter the price of the cheapest decent NVMe. And that's ignoring the fact that the cheapest NVMes are 2280 and you have to pay a pretty heavy premium for the smaller ones required by the official adapter. Oh, and you also have to buy the adapter. Sure, there are some applications where an NVMe makes sense, but using microSD cards on the Pi is far from over.

[@jonathanbuzzard1376]

For software RAID on a Pi put /boot on a microSD and boot from that, with everything else on the software RAID. It is much simpler than having boot on the devices making up the software RAID and the longevity and speed of microSD are no longer an issue. I have been doing with USB drives on my Linux machines now for well over a decade and strongly recommend it. For added safety rsync /boot onto the software RAID and any problems just replace the microSD boot from a recovery disk and recreate /boot

[@engineer9975]

I love the shots at LTT Segways to our sponsors lol

[@U1TR4F0RCE]

I think the main thing for microSD cards for quite a while will be for certain types of retro game stuff. You can't fit an m.2 in a DS or gameboy cart.

[@TommyThousandFaces]

Before SBCs like these could do these things it was possible to buy an eMMC to micro SD card adapter to get better random performance and a bit more resiliancy. But they're no match to SSD for sure!