Hi
In Internet and Youtube I saw “It’s time to ditch microSD”
I'm still new to Raspberry and co.
A MicroSD card is much easier to use. Have you installed an SSD in your Raspberry 5? My main use case is streaming from Jellyfin server (network traffic). Can anyone say whether the performance is significantly better with SSD instead of SDcard?
best regards
It's faster, but the impact is I/O not compute or GPU performance so boot is marginally faster and scrolling around the GUI where art is being read/rendered is marginally faster. It's "marginal gains" and FOMO territory .. it's not so much faster that you're really missing out.
Hi
In Internet and Youtube I saw “It’s time to ditch microSD”
I'm still new to Raspberry and co.
A MicroSD card is much easier to use. Have you installed an SSD in your Raspberry 5? My main use case is streaming from Jellyfin server (network traffic). Can anyone say whether the performance is significantly better with SSD instead of SDcard?
best regards
I view the SSD vs SD card discussion more of a question of reliability vs. performance with Kodi / LibreElec but SD card reliability has improved significantly over the past 5 years. As mentioned above the main advantage of SSD for performance is disk I/O. I run Mezzmo, which is similar to your Jellyfin server, and have an endpoint performance Wiki page where I compare certain performance characteristics.
The displaying of 150 items is mainly a function of computing power to parse the server response and display the items in LibreElec. The full sync compares disk I/O. This particular Raspberry Pi 5 being tested has an SSD in it for the Kodi database. If I switched it back to the SD card I suspect the performance would drop by 2-3X but the Mezzmo sync progress is a background process so the user is unlikely to see the difference. I am not sure how Jellyfin syncs the client to the server but I believe it does based upon the operating mode. If there is interest I can switch back to the SD card and post the comparison results ? The Raspberry Pi 4 listed is running an SD Card.
Thanks,
Jeff
I'm fine without a pile of stats being posted. Everyone has slightly different use-cases and test results are thus not universal truths to be followed. And in forums such discussions always end up with someone trying to prove something is/isn't better/worse/faster/slower than something else. I choose ignorance and less forum drama. If people want to run an RPi5 on an NVME drive .. go nuts. If people are happy running on an SD card .. go nuts. Go forth and watch movies.
The point I was trying to make earlier in my post but got a bit off track with the numbers is that I agree with you. An SSD will help with storage I/O but most folks won't see much of a difference. I have a few Raspberry Pi devices and only one has an SSD, my test unit and that was mainly to see what was involved in adding an SSD. SD card reliability has improved but isn't at the level of SSDs. Reliability would be the main thing which would drive me to put an SSD in a Raspberry Pi.
Jeff
For normal use there isn't a very big difference in speed, its way faster when rebooting for an update, its about half the time with ssd.
So this thread has got my attention since I use a remotely hosted Jellyfin Server at a datacenter I look after, and have a Starlink connection at home.
If I ran my Pi5 LE install on an SSD instead of a MicroSD, this means I could set the cache/buffer type to store the entire file on disk as quickly as my internet connection could download it, which would be better for me than the 1GB max size currently configurable in RAM.
So how do I go about installing the LE image to an SSD and booting from it, rather than MicroSD?
Just write the LE image to the SSD and then power it on. The RPi firmware supports boot from nvme.
It's faster, but the impact is I/O not compute or GPU performance so boot is marginally faster and scrolling around the GUI where art is being read/rendered is marginally faster. It's "marginal gains" and FOMO territory .. it's not so much faster that you're really missing out.
Would it affect importing/updating a large library or is that mostly network bound?
I'm still thinking I'll do it, mostly because I've had bad experiences with microSD cards going bad randomly. I know all flash/SSD storage will fail eventually over a long enough time span but I feel like NVME SSD's are a fair bit more resilient than SD-type flash media.
Would it affect importing/updating a large library or is that mostly network bound?
If you added content it makes negligible difference as most time is spent querying internet sources. If you didn't then it will complete faster as the small file read/write is improved. Overall, as said before, you're not missing anything.
So, after some thought, I think im just going to stick to a fast MicroSD. Running an external SSD means my nice tidy FLIRC case set up won't look so tidy.
I also enabled unlimited caching to disk last night for a test and it worked fantastically. The write life of modern SD cards is actually quite high so I don't think this is unsafe as it used to be. I currently have a 64GB Sandisk Extreme Pro V30 card installed, but have ordered a 256GB model instead. I think at £25 for a 256GB card, even if it died every year (which it won't), then who cares?
You can use an internal SSD with a Raspberry Pi 5. Here's a picture of my test unit. SSDs do increase the price of the Raspberry Pi 5 to where an N100 box is close in overall cost and performance.
Jeff
I use external case like this, very small and discrete.
In my Rasperry Pi3 I have used the same MicroSD card for 8 years, it runs 24/7.
Transcend 600x 8GB MLC card, it cost £3.89 at the time
I don't mean to imply that I have 8 years uptime, I have re-imaged the card a few times during major version updates etc. But same card for 8 years with no failure/corruption.
In my Rasperry Pi3 I have used the same MicroSD card for 8 years, it runs 24/7.
Transcend 600x 8GB MLC card, it cost £3.89 at the time
I don't mean to imply that I have 8 years uptime, I have re-imaged the card a few times during major version updates etc. But same card for 8 years with no failure/corruption.
That's good, but if you're not copying content or caching to the card you've barely got a couple of gigs written to it over that time I'd think.
That's good, but if you're not copying content or caching to the card you've barely got a couple of gigs written to it over that time I'd think.
That is the point. To don't mess the "system" card with data. I'm using "small" (32-64GB) SD cards for Libreelec and a bigger USB3 stick for any data (speed and capacity enogh for me, also energy efficient). As my RPi's running 24/7, I don't care about the boot time... and in that way I don't have headache when need to reinstall the system...
If You have all data (DB + audio + video) on NAS of other central storage, what can You win with SSD boot compared to good quality SD-card?
Boot time not counted as an issue as I'm running my RasPi's 24/7 as well.
Aren't USB devices consuming slightly more power?
If You have all data (DB + audio + video) on NAS of other central storage, what can You win with SSD boot compared to good quality SD-card?
Boot time not counted as an issue as I'm running my RasPi's 24/7 as well.
Aren't USB devices consuming slightly more power?
Probably nothing..more headache when things go wrong..leave the SSD connected for backups and other data..Rpi's are nowadays fast enough anyway..
