On Thu, Feb 8, 2024 at 11:57 AM Ralph Aichinger <r...@h5.or.at> wrote: > > On Thu, 2024-02-08 at 15:36 +0000, Andy Smith wrote: > > USB storage is for phones and cameras etc, not for serious > > computing. Many people will disagree with that statement and say > > they use it all the time and it is fine. > > I am clearly in the latter camp. This mail is delivered via a Raspberry > Pi 4 that has a 500G USB SSD. Before the Pi4 I used a Pi3 and a Pi2 (I > think) with USB disks (first rotating, then SSD). Probably for 5 years > or so. Never had a problem (unlike with the SD cards I used before, SD > cards always died on me from to many writes after a few months). > > > They will keep saying that > > until it isn't fine, and then they'll be in a world of hurt. > > This is the same with any hard disk or SSD. If you buy the most > expensive "enterprise" disk, with SAS or whatever, it still can > break on the next day, taking all your data with you. > > Actually with USB disks, sometimes you can remove the USB > controller, replace it in case of breakage, giving you more > or less the same reliability as any "normal" disk. > I've never had USB controllers break, though, so I do not > care. I just take backups as with any other disk. > > > I learned not to go there a long time ago and have seen plenty of > > reminders along the way from others' misfortunes to not ever go > > there again myself. > > How does a breaking USB disk differ from a breaking SATA disk?
I may be mistaken, but I believe AS is talking about USB thumb drives, SDcards and the like. I don't think he's talking about external SSD's and NVME's over USB. But I don't want to put words in his mouth. My experience with SDcards and thumb drives is along the lines of AS's. I own a lot of dev boards (dating back to the early 2010's) for testing, and I could go through a storage device, like an SDcard, in about 6 months. But I would also add a swap file to the installation because the dev boards were so resource constrained. You simply can't run a C++ compiler on a Beagleboard with 256MB of RAM. The swap file, even with a low swappiness, would eat up SDcards and thumb drives. Jeff
