File Systems 128GB and larger on Raspberry Pi 3

[jjefferies]

Hi, I've possibly got a chicken and egg situation/question:
First just to make sure I'm not making any idiot mistakes/assumptions. My raspberry pi 3 (RP3) has 1 SD card slot and 4 USB (standard), and one micro USB port (power), and an HDMI port. There is also what appears to be a legacy display port intended for simple display that I have no interest in at this time.

Now my situation is that I would like to use a 128GB SDXC card to run the RP3 from (I'm a firm believer in the old adage that you can never have enough storage or speed). My RP3 currently is running from a 32GB SD card. The SDXC card is formatted as exfat. I have mounted it on my main machine running SUSE 42.1. My understanding is that the standard Raspberry Pi OS, Raspian, is not built with exfat capability. But that it can be added to a running system. But if I want to install Raspian to the SDXC card
1. can it boot if the card is exfat? What formats are acceptable to
2. what are other alternatives for using the 128GB card?
a. reformat it to ext/3/4 ?
b. use a different linux OS distribution? which one?

Think that's it for the moment. No, I have no idea why I would need 128GB. But like I said above I believe you can never have enough storage.
best regards
jjefferies

[Andyroo]

There is a 'big card' guide published at https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati ... matting.md but I've not followed it as I only use 8 or 16Gb cards for two reasons:

1) SD cards fail - I know the bigger cards last longer with levelling and spare blocks etc but they still die (I'm a photographer with RAW images coming out of the DSLR sensors by the ton)
2) I'm cheap - I buy good original SD cards
3) For storage I use NAS / RAID and hard / SS disks as needed

Speed of data transfer for me is not an issue (though volume can be) so I'm not fussed by slow LAN or USB speeds from the Pi machines at this time

I'm about to flip a Pi 3 to USB boot as per https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati ... des/msd.md - more for the interest rather than need.

[B.Goode]

if I want to install Raspian to the SDXC card
1. can it boot if the card is exfat? What formats are acceptable to

A1: No. The format of the boot partition must be FAT - FAT16 or FAT32. That is imposed by the RPi hardware boot mechanism.

But if you simply 'flash' a standard Raspberry Pi Foundation Raspbian Operating System image to the card using Etcher that is what you will get as a result.No special preparation or thinking required.

The space on the microSD card not needed for booting will be formatted to a linux-based filesystem which will be expanded to fill the remainder of the card on first boot.

In short. Just do what the Raspberry Pi Foundation describe and support and all will be well. There is no impediment to using a 128Gb or larger card. But doing so is not necessarily A Good Idea.

[jjefferies]

"There is no impediment to using a 128Gb or larger card. But doing so is not necessarily A Good Idea."
Ok, will go with the suggestions. But why is using a larger card "not necessarily A Good Idea."?
The 128 GB card is USD $24. which is not particularly an onerous price. It claims 90MB/s
transfer rate. I've spent most of my career in embedded systems and don't recall a situation
where more memory, speed, storage weren't positives. Unless there is concern with power
consumption or heat. But so far I've not seen an issue other than not having exfat file support
initially in place on my main SUSE box.

Thanks for the responses and best regards.
JJefferies

[DougieLawson]

You may not be getting a genuine 128GB card for $24 - that's way too cheap.
Also when a 128GB card goes end-of-life and read-only that's a lot of data to recover.

Raspbian will fit on 8GB, Raspbian works best on 16GB. You should keep anything that doesn't fit on 16GB on an external SSD or external hard drive.

[drgeoff]

You may not be getting a genuine 128GB card for $24 - that's way too cheap.

Maybe yes, maybe no.

https://www.amazon.com/Sandisk-Ultra-12 ... 073JYC4XM/ "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com"

[LTolledo]

But if I want to install Raspian to the SDXC card
1. can it boot if the card is exfat? What formats are acceptable to
2. what are other alternatives for using the 128GB card?
a. reformat it to ext/3/4 ?
b. use a different linux OS distribution? which one?

1. No, exFAT is not supported in raspbian. FAT32 format is supported as standard.

2. Alternative use of 128GB SDXC microSD card:
a. formatted as EXT4, use as data storage card in a USB to microSD adaptor, with the raspbian OS in a smaller 16 or 32GB microSD.
b. --- abstained ----

as stated already, better use Etcher to flash the Raspbian image to the microSD card as it will do the formatting automatically.

For your reference below are my uses for memory capacities larger than 64GB in RPi systems:
1. 128GB microSD card:
a. retropie with game ROMs
b. data storage for RPi, formatted to NTFS (used between RPi/Linux and windows systems)
2. 128GB USB thumb drive: USB boot drive for RPi3B/RPi3B+ using Raspbian Stretch with Desktop
3. 240GB SSD: USB boot drive for RPi3B+ Desktop
4. 250GB USB HDD: USB boot drive with NTFS data partition
5. 2TB USB HDD: USB Boot drive, Raspbian Stretch with Desktop

[W. H. Heydt]

You may not be getting a genuine 128GB card for $24 - that's way too cheap.

Maybe yes, maybe no.

https://www.amazon.com/Sandisk-Ultra-12 ... 073JYC4XM/ "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com"

Costco has been selling a 2 pack of 64GB SanDisk Ultra Plus cards for as low as $32. So $24 for a 128GB, while low, isn't "alarm bells" low.

[W. H. Heydt]

For your reference below are my uses for memory capacities larger than 64GB in RPi systems:
1. 128GB microSD card:
a. retropie with game ROMs
b. data storage for RPi, formatted to NTFS (used between RPi/Linux and windows systems)
2. 128GB USB thumb drive: USB boot drive for RPi3B/RPi3B+ using Raspbian Stretch with Desktop
3. 240GB SSD: USB boot drive for RPi3B+ Desktop
4. 250GB USB HDD: USB boot drive with NTFS data partition
5. 2TB USB HDD: USB Boot drive, Raspbian Stretch with Desktop

I have one Pi running from a 64GB SD card, a couple more running from 60GB SSDs, and a Pi3B+ that runs from a 314GB WD PiDRive HDD.

As a practical matter, once you go past 32GB, it really doesn't matter how big you go. The setup procedure is going to be the same.

[HawaiianPi]

The problem is micro SD cards are not designed to be system boot drives (read the warranty, which is VOID since you are using your micro SD cards as boot drives). Not to mention, they get expensive in large sizes (128GB seems to be the convergence point between micro SD and SSD pricing, and in larger sizes SSD will cost less). While I've had good luck with the SandDisk A1 cards, I usually go with an SSD or HDD on systems I need more than 64GB of storage on.

Most of my Pi computers run on 32GB A1 cards, with a couple booting from 128GB or 256GB SSD with a USB-SATA adapter.

Boot takes longer from SSD, but once the system is up and running it feels faster (SSD has better random I/O and higher IOPS).

To set these systems up I just write a Raspbian image to the SSD with Etcher the same way I'd write a micro SD card, then connect it to my Pi 3B+ (or 3B with the USB boot OTP bit programmed) with this USB 3.0 to SATA III adapter cable (powered by the official PSU).

[jjefferies]

The problem is micro SD cards are not designed to be system boot drives (read the warranty, which is VOID since you are using your micro SD cards as boot drives).

Don't see anything like that in the warranty. Maybe I'm just not reading it right. It does say "only for use with microSDXC devices".

Not to mention, they get expensive in large sizes (128GB seems to be the convergence point between micro SD and SSD pricing, and in larger sizes SSD will cost less). While I've had good luck with the SandDisk A1 cards, I usually go with an SSD or HDD on systems I need more than 64GB of storage on.

Doesn't particularly matter as USD $24. isn't going to break the bank And thanks to whoever posted the Amazon ad for 128GB drives for USD $21. My suspicion is that these size drives are going to be doing nothing but getting cheaper. Oh and this particular one is PATRIOT LX Series. Whereas the Amazon ad is for SANDISK. I've had reasonable usage from both brands in the past.

To set these systems up I just write a Raspbian image to the SSD with Etcher the same way I'd write a micro SD card,

Which brings up another question, but I use SUSE 42.1 x86_64 bit system for my main computer and the Linux version of Etcher is 32 bit. I tried running it but got a few issues, i.e. it wouldn't come up. Any suggestions. Otherwise my intent is to redothe SCXC card with a FAT32 32 GB partition and a ext4 partition for the rest.

[drgeoff]

Linux dd or even cp works fine for putting an img on a card.

[jjefferies]

Linux dd or even cp works fine for putting an img on a card.

You're right. Silly me it was late at night and I was half asleep and ... all those other idiot excuses.