Hi all,
I have had a network of remote RPi Zero's running for a little over three years now, all running Raspbian, booting from microSD cards.
They are slowly dying of old age (files are randomly becoming corrupted; only three of the original ten systems remain online, with most of them having died since in the last few months).
All the files my software is creating are all saved into a tmpfs to minimise SD card wear, but understandably there is a limit to their lifespan, and it seems (under my current usage) that it's about three years for the SD cards I'm using (SanDisk ones... top of the line that money could buy back when I set them up in mid 2017).
I am now developing a next-generation system based on the RPi4B, which I understand has recently been updated to support USB booting (or it's in beta, or it's coming soon). In any case, I was interested in this alternative to booting from an SD card from a durability perspective as one of my goals for this next-gen system is a lifespan of at least five years.
I did an admittedly-quick Google and found this thread comparing the speeds of USB stick vs SD card vs USB SSD, but it's several years old, and is focused on speed rather than longevity.
I understand that there is limited knowledge of the RPi4's longevity due to the fact it's new hardware, but in general (based on earlier RPi models and SD/SSD hardware), can I expect longer life by booting Raspbian from a USB3 SSD instead of from a microSD card?
And besides having a tmpfs for my own scripts to be stored in (and for their output to be saved to prior to data upload to my server), is there anything else I can do to maximise system lifespan? e.g. can OS logs and log files for other software that may be running in the background be diverted to the tmpfs as well (or is an SSD fault-tolerant enough that this won't be worth bothering with?)?
Thanks in advance for any advice.
David