[sf-lug] "Stick PC" and other SFF computers

[Akkana Peck]

Rick Moen writes:
> Quoting Ken Shaffer (kenshaffer80 at gmail.com):
> > I booted off an USB stick for about a year before the stick wore
> > out (then just switched back to the internal Ubuntu 14.04).  The 32GB (not
> > 64GB after all), micro sd has been in the stick for four years, collected
> > 300000+jpgs from a few security cams, and hasn't given me any problems. 
> 
> And I'd expect it wouldn't, with that usage model.
> 
> Flash storage generically has the problem that each cell can do only a
> limited number of erase-rewrite cycles, and _server_ duty simply

I'd forgotten about that: I have a Raspberry Pi Zero W in the upstairs bedroom that's been sending temperature/humidity data to a webapp since August 2018. It runs off a microSD card, and I think I've been using the same card the whole time.  Current uptime is 92 days (I guess we had a power failure in June). So the normal read/write cycles of Raspbian (an ARM Debian) don't seem to be a problem on that microSD card. It doesn't store the weather data locally, so it doesn't do a lot of writes and erases, just whatever Raspbian does for normal system logging. Flash storage seems to work well enough for that sort of usage.

        ...Akkana