Is an SD card in a Pi considered normal use

Not had a problem yet, but on a recent wheezy install, I noticed that it complains at every boot that the FAT boot partition was not properly unmounted last time. Was rather concerned initially as I assumed it was the unix filesystem, but it turned out to be the other partition, which I don't think normally gets written to, so the risk of corruption due to this is probably very low.

I do try to avoid cutting the power without shutting down the OS, but it does occasionally happen.

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Andrew Gabriel 
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When you needed to pull the card, did you already try to cycle the power? In my experience there has been an issue in the past where it would not come up after reboot, but powercycle fixed it. I have not been able to locate the problem, but it appears to have been fixed by a later update.

I think it was not related to the card, but to something going wrong when shutting down or warm booting, maybe some device driver init.

Do you shutdown your Pi or just cut the power?

- j -

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And now for something completely different...

It is a well known problem. The card socket is poorly designed, and stresses the card such that the card bends away from the contacts in the center. Look at the cards that quit working. They will be slightly curved.

Some "solve" the problem by clamping a clothes peg on the card to press it onto the contacts. Mine is in an enclosure, so I could not use that option. In stead, I put a stack of gaffa tape in the right spot, so it presses on the card.

It is also not uncommon for the card socket to break.

The new B+ model uses a better card socket.

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RoRo

I see what you mean about the socket. The cards are only supported down either side, presumably for a low profile. Online prices for micro-SDs

Ebay, so I think that's best for new cards for the model B.

You are adding an extra set of contacts to oxidise/fail by using an adaptor, though.

Some cards fail. Even branded ones aren't necessarily what they say they are (see 'On MicroSD Problems « bunnie's blog' ). So there are no solid rules, but these recommendations have worked for me in small SD-based Linux boxes for the last five years:

· Buy good media. ?Good? can include: branded, not the cheapest, from a place you trust. · Buy slightly bigger media than you need. · Before use, format it using the SD Association's official tool, or failing that, a hard format in a digital camera. · Use a good power supply. · If you need the uptime, rig up some kind of UPS. · Try to minimize card insertions, knocks, jolts, etc. SD cards may be solid-state storage, but their connections are mechanical. · If you'd miss it, back it up, because it will fail. · If it matters, back it up to several places, and check that these backups exist and are readable as often as you care to.

cheers, Stewart

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 Stewart C. Russell ? http://scruss.com/blog ? OpenPGP Key: EB265B06 
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My 2nd rPi is used for TextToSpeech, and the only control is the power on/off-switch, switched-off during various prompts. It's been cut-in-flight 5-times-a-day for 200 days so far, with no problems.

I'm suprised that there isn't a well developed PXEboot or similar for the RPi. I know it needs the SD card to boot but I'd like to then hand off to O/S storage on a NAS. Googling shows it's possible, but it's complex and not yet what I'd judge as a "matured solution".

That would alleviate the problems I and others have had with heavy writes on SD cards.

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-Toby 
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Not exactly PXE boot, but there's nothing to stop you having your main filesystem on an NFS server. It's fairly easy to set up.

I use a USB disk for the root filesystem on my main, so the SD card is only used during the first fraction of a second of booting (apart from "firmware" and kernel updates and the occasional configuration change).