I have 6 OSMC Pi2’s running 120 days a year for little over the year now and 3 of them needed SD card replacement. OSMC can’t max out the 8GB Samsung Evo read/write cycles that fast, can it? So far they have been replaced under warranty. They have 3GB of videos on them and maybe 3GB of free space. Were they lemons? Should I try ramfs or something?
Hello Swaan,
I can confirm your experience. A RPi constantly running OSMC – or just any other Kodi distribution – is an SD killer.
Maybe @sam_nazarko can explain more details on this, but obvioulsy the frequent writing to the database and logs does really wear out the cards that fast. The occasional hard power down when Kodi hangs again, does the rest. I had the frustrating experience of 3 broken cards in 3 months on just 1 Pi myself.
I can recommend moving the complete installation to a USB Stick or even a small HDD. If you follow the steps described here – Move osmc home to hdd – your installation with all custom add ons and settings is moved to USB and you can immediately continue using the Pi.
This solved the issue for me. Seems USB sticks are much more robust than SD cards, though it’s technically the same memory inside. No broken system ever since.
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That is possible, indeed.
I have here 4 PI’s running, however logs completely disabled and remote DB (MySQL) + NFS keeps the devices alive.
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Thanks for the replies!
Here is a nice article for those interested: http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/169/how-can-i-extend-the-life-of-my-sd-card
I will try some of these - logging dirs to ram, turning off journaling of ext4. Didn’t see tmp nor swap use.
Well generally I agree that a 24x7 operation is not the most healthy thing to do to a SD Card but I can not share the experience. I have 2 Pi’s that are running OSMC from SD card and they both are now running for more than 365 days without an SD Card failure.
I’ve also had over 1 year on several SD cards with no failures. I think the one on my original Pi was 2+ years. The Pi failed, but I never checked exactly why (because it gave me a good excuse to upgrade to a Pi2.).
I do not store any media on the SD card, just the OS and MySQL database.
Rpib original, rpib+, rpi2. Same sd card moved as RPI upgrades are available … First raspbmc (I think that was pre OSMC name) then OSMC, 24x7, on ups. All media on Nas. Database local. Capacity Large.
Only SD card I ever corrupted was on a rpi3 that was NOT on a ups… And frequent power outs due to area construction
As you can imagine, SD cards of mine get quite a bit of use. Apart from testing, we also use them for compiling. I use OSMC SD cards as they’re fast and reliable, which really does make a difference when compiling, and also because it’s important to eat one’s own dog food.
I’ve been running some cards for years without issue, although I have a habit of losing / misplacing them after time.
Sam