Hello - I’ve been using this setup with Roon for about 14 months. After about 6 months of perfect use, I’ve had RoPieee die 3 times within the past 6 months, all 3 times rendering the microSD unusable - each time its write protected and I cannot get it unlocked any way possible - for the price of an microSD card its not worth spending hours on it, but I did try most of the ways I found via google the first time it happened and was unsuccessful.
I do understand the microSD cards themselves can randomly corrupt, but 3 different cards in 6 months makes me wonder I am also wondering if this issue has ever been seen and if I am doing something wrong, or if the Roon updates could be effecting it. My setup over the 14 months has not changed at all. I also do never really log into Ropieee itself to update it or change setting, etc.
I know these are not great details, but figured I would ask, as searching did not get me anywhere.
I use a long lifetime SD card in another Pi where the SD card is regularly written to. Previously I used a regular card which died. The current one has been in use for a couple of years now with no issue.
However Ropieee doesn’t write to the card in normal operation - so it might not help.
If you want to try a longer life card take a look at Samsung Pro Endurance or Sandisk Extreme Pro.
FWIW I run 7 Ropieees they mostly have Sandisk ultra cards - and have been variously been running for a year with no issues.
Disruptions in the power are very rare here, but when there is one, the SD card in one of my two Ropieee appliances usually goes bad. It is powered by Ciunas Audio supercap PSU, while the other, whose SD card usually survives, is powered by Allo Shanti PSU. I use Toshiba 64GB SD cards (M302R).
It may be an overkill, but the smallest UPS you can find might be a solution. Or a better PSU, of course.
Do you power off / on your Pi often? Reboot it often? I leave mine on. It’s not been 100% stable but I don’t rebuild cards as often as you describe. But I have the same issue with other OSs (I just had a diet-pi build fail). So, I don’t think this is a RoPieee issue but a general microSD used as OS disk issue.
There are also a lot of counterfeit sd cards out there so buy from reputable sources.
First off, thank you everyone for the replies, all of this helps.
@jarip I havent paid attention to power outages as a factor, but thats an interesting notion. I dont get a ton here, but they happen 3-4 times a yr.
@ipeverywhere I do not power it off or reboot it often, I just let it run and do its thing. At the same time I do not update it often, which might be a negative. I had the same thought as you, that in general it very well could be a downside of using a MicroSD as an OS. I will buy a better card like @GregD suggested and try that.
AceRimmer
(Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!)
11
Totally agree
I had the sd card fail in both a microrendu and an ultrarendu for no good apparent reason.
And unfortunately in their ecosystem you can’t just use another card and reflash it, you have to buy a pre programmed card from them direct via snail mail so likely down 3 to who knows how many days with todays usps service!
Swore off anything that uses sd cards for os nowadays.
If you have 2 or more SD cards of the same type, size, and manufacturer, then make an image of the working SD card. You can then if need be, clone this image to the other same SD card.
I prefer using dd on Linux, there are options to do this on Windows as well. I do this for my devices and often make the SD clone right away when all is setup/configured and test the clone in the device to ensure it’s good.