SD cards for the Pi

[Gramps]

Hello folk,

This is probably a foolish question, but I'm wondering exactly what SD cards are best for the Pi? As in brand or model and speed? I read some of the information in the forum, but my 73 year old brain is having a bit of a hard time making heads or tails of what I'm reading. I am extremely computer/electronics illiterate but I'm decided to give the Raspberry Pi a hard try and believe me it has been hard. I had purchased one of the original Pi cards and was doing somewhat OK with it, but it went bad and stopped working. When I mean it went bad, I mean I was using the Pi and all of a sudden the screen went blank. I copied down the program for formatting the SD cards from the internet and installed it, but it cannot format the card, so I'm assuming the card went bad (and yes I know what happens many times when you assume). I want to purchase a larger card to replace the original, but there are so many on the store rack that I'm not sure which to purchase. Any suggestions?
Sorry if I sound crabby. It's hot and very humid here and I think its time I took a afternoon nap in front of the fan.

[fruitoftheloom]

http://elinux.org/RPi_SD_cards

[FTrevorGowen]

FWIW (and "pictures are worth ...") these are the ones I've used:
http://www.cpmspectrepi.webspace.virgin ... cards.html
Trev.

[mahjongg]

Most importantly, buy your card from a reliable vendor, SD-cards from unreliable vendors may be fake, (Chinese copies) and sometimes do not even have the stated capacity, or have really unreliable controllers.

[Gramps]

Thanks everyone,

I sort of jumped into the Raspberry with both feet, probably should have read a bit more and tested the water with a couple of toes first. I know absolutely nothing about computers or electronics and the old brain is getting a pretty hard workout trying to learn. Some days I wonder if my 72 year old mind is up to the chore.

[gsh]

http://elinux.org/RPi_SD_cards

This is pretty much useless... People blame their sd cards for corruption issues that were fixed at least a year ago!

The best would be the cheapest, buy the Raspberry Pi bundled with an 8G SD card and its only $5 Or buy from the swag store for £4 (UK)

Gordon

[Gramps]

I did purchase my Pi with the Noobs card. I just want to be able to try different systems without trashing the Noobs card. I want to be able to use the Original Raspberry OS if I really mess up a card with a different OS. Kind of like always having a rain slicker handy, even on a clear day.

[DougieLawson]

Head to Walmart, pick up a few 8GB SDCards and a USB SDCard reader.

The USB SDCard reader is the best tool in my box, it lets me copy one SDCard to another on my RPi using
sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/sda bs=80M &

[Gramps]

OK,
Stopped by Walmart after church today and purchased a couple of 16GB class 6 SD cards (they didn't have any class 4 cards). They are SanDisk cards. I have the second Noobs card which I purchased from MCM Electronics here in the US, after the first card I had died. This is now my Raspi system card and is running my Raspberry Pi. Can I copy this card while it is running my Raspberry, or do I have to make another card from the beginning? Sorry if these questions are foolish sounding, I'm really new at all of this and the learning ain't as easy as it once was.

[DougieLawson]

You can copy /dev/mmcblk0 to another device while the RPi is running. It's best to do that on a dormant system as things can get updated while they're being copied.

What I do is sudo touch /forcefsck before starting the copy. Then during boot it will do a filesystem check on the copied partitions.

[Gramps]

OK, I'll give it a try later this evening after I have the farm chores finished. Thanks for your help.

[BostonDev]

I've been using different brands and quality levels for a year now and never had a problem so far. And this is in production systems. For those though, I tend to go for something that's at least name brand. For any other application, just get the cheapest cards you can get; aside from some shady fly-by-night eBay ones obviously.