alt Hacker News>> It's not, it's awful for that use case.
The problem, imho, is that it's amazing right up to a point where it isn't. It's tiny, noiseless, sips power....while providing what you need it to. Until one day the service you set up is not available anymore, the Pi isn't responding on the network, and then you check and the microSD is corrupt and everything you've set up is gone. Hope you had a good backup because the only way to fix it is to set it up again from scratch.
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egorfine • 08/01/2025
> microSD is corrupt and everything you've set up is gone
Unlike Intel servers, where corruption of the boot media is of course of no consequences.
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> Hope you had a good backup because the only way to fix it is to set it up again from scratch.
You can get that from any homelab setup though. Personally, I long since went the route of regularly setting up my Pis from scratch using Ansible - that way I at least know that I didn't forget to commit any manual changes made.
Pi-specific, my recommendation is to have a serious power supply. For the old Pis with Micro USB, Meanwell makes good ones, link that with a good wire gauge (18 AWG or more) and off you go. New Pis with USB-C, Anker power supply and a decent USB-C cable... that solves a lot of microSD corruption issues because the power regulation to the card isn't that good and just passes through brownouts/undervoltage conditions.
And the second recommendation, use "industrial" microSD cards, preferably those that are SLC. Grab them from Mouser, yes they are a bit more expensive than "normal" microSD cards but will live so much longer.
[1] https://www.mouser.de/ProductDetail/SanDisk/SDSDQED-008G-XI