Hello. I am about to buy a new SSD and I am asking myself about if there is a way to avoid that cycling process. Maybe the first question is "Why" that happens, and the second is "Is there some list of devices which this happens less or never?"

Depending on the answer maybe I will buy a USB stick instead of an SSD.

Thanks

Nice article (albeit 5 years old) here.

That mentions the number one way to avoid the problem is to have battery backups. If it isn't a laptop use a UPS. If it is a laptop it has a battery.

I'm not sure it is a big a problem now as it was 5 years ago though.

A USB drive is not going to perform as well as an SSD simply because the interface is slower (unless you're using a USB enclosure for your SSD).

Interesting article. I made the leap to a complete SSD system a couple of years ago: all Samsung 850's, some Pro, some "normal". I abuse the heck out of them and they keep coming back for more. I do have NAS backups. The "Pro" hosts my user /home because to me, that is the most important on a workstation. Had a few power outages but the system has always come back up, no issues. I run trim regularly (weekly).

I would not go back to spinning drives as my main hard drives but use them in my NAS. SSDs are very, very reliable nowadays if you buy reputable brands. Can only speak for the Samsungs: lots of brands out there.

A usb flash drive is basically only for temp data that can be lost but needs to be transported between machines. It has little chance of being more reliable than a modern SSD. In my opinion.

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I've been using SSD laptops for a while now, & have used them on my RPi3Bs, without any problems, so I'd suggest you stick with SSD, rather than use pendrives, for anything important.

All these technologies have come on a long way since they were first introduced.

P.S. I'm using a more modern SSD (M2 SSD) in my 'desktop' right now.

Oh sorry, maybe it would be better to say the SSDvsMicroSD it was for a Raspberry pi 3, otherwise it has no sense.

I am going to try to avoid the brand OCZ and Crucial, since I read from some person talking about the need of having to make a "power cycle" with that brand, and also because today I had to do it with my Crucial SSD.

I wil buy a SSD for my raspberry.
Thanks to everyone who said something about that topic.

MicroSD is basically the same as usb flash just to be accurate.

From yesterday i am thinking in a alternative possibility, because I need to save some money.

This is to give to the Raspberry the SSD connected through the USB2.0, and in my computer that has USB3.1 by a PCIe plug there a 64GB USB 3.0 memory stick. I am not a gamer and just want ro webbrowse, youtube and office possibilities, so it's more than enough.

I am considering if its possible to exist a kind of programmers who make alternative firmware versions fixing that problem. I am searching for it but don't find it.

This is so important for my Raspberry project, because I want it for a high quality HIFI system I want to build, and I don't want to be dismanteling it many times a year. I want something solid.

If that doesn't exist, I am thinking in a small battery of a UPS, but it has to be very small.

I don't know, any suggestions about that?


And Jefro, the speed of a microSd is 40MB/s if its a good one, and the old USB2.0 is 400MB/s. Imagine the difference with the USB 3.1

For the first part. I think you are saying that you want to use storage on your home pc for use on this Pi, is that correct? Yes, you would normally use network to attach remote storage. NFS or ISCSI or other. Possible to use other connections but not common.

I wasn't really meaning much about speeds. I was trying to suggest that a modern SSD will be more reliable that a SD card or USB. Many folks run their PI(embedded system) from a SD card or USB.

No Jefro, I want to use the SSD on the RPi as a unique and only storage available there. No microSD card or USB. Boot from there. And this is not a problem, but as I want to use the RPi as a HIFI DAC and to store music there and don't want to be concerning about power cycles I am trying to find a possible solution.

The model of my SSD stopped receiving firmware updates since 2013, so not lucky with this.

As the only boot source on RPi3B, (OTP bit set), I have to power my SSDs externally, I've found that there isn't enough power from the USB sockets themselves to boot from it.
(Official 2.5A power supply.)

I use a Quattro case that fits the disk below the RPi board, run a cable to the USB socket, whilst powering it externally, neatest setup that I found.

If you haven't found it, there is a forum specifically dedicated to the RPi.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/

Fatmac, it seems the SSD doesn't need extra power if the SATA to USB cable you use is a USB2.0 cable isntead of a USB3.0.

Thanks for the forum, but since I was asking for a SSD related question I thought it would fit better here

What is the model of your SSD? If it's a Samsung or Intel you should be fine. Of course, a power interruption has the potential to cause filesystem corruption on any storage device. However, that usually occurs if the power goes out during a write to the storage device. Back when SSDs first came out, Intel had the best firmware and IIRC, Samsung licensed Intel's firmware technology. Don't know if that's still the case, but I do know a lot of builders that refuse to use anything but Samsung or Intel SSDs in their builds, more so just Samsung as Intel seems to be getting out of the SSD consumer market.

I forgot about that post when my SSD needed a power cycle again and didn't worked since the 4th time. I just let forgot about my computer and was using the raspberry for a couple of weeks.

The most probable thing is I will buy a Kingston A400 240GB in the next 2-3 days. I wanted to buy the Samsung EVO 860 240GB as it was at 35€ on amazon, but it seems it was something like a temporal offer because now is at 56€. Hope the Kingston have a good behaviour with my pc.

So the plan is to install the infamous Crucial M4 to the raspberry and the Kingston A400 to the computer. As the raspberry is always powered I supposed I don't have to have any power cycles needs.

INTERESTING THING!:I thought abut connecting a little power bank between the SPU and the SSD, and I searched about that and found someone did it, but the power bank have to be able to charge itself and also give the power to SSD at the same time, which is not so easy to find, but I will try it and do it and let's see if it works. Sadly I didn't saved the webpage where found this information.

Will tell you about how everything works