Is it good practice to install system on micorSD card & storage on USB?

1st Official Post

    I'm in the process of moving all my devices from OpenELEC to LibreELEC since I have had problems last week with the recent OE8 update.

    This includes Generic-x86_64, RPi2 and USB devices.

    My existing RPi2 upgraded perfectly to LibreELEC. I originally set this up a couple of years ago with OE system files on the microSD and storage files on the USB. This was supposed to be better at the time.

    I am now going to purchase a new RPi3 for my daughter and wondered if it was still considered good practice to install system on micorSD and storage on USB like I did before. I just don't know if this setup is any better than a simple install to only the microSD. I wondered what the folks on this forum thought?

    Any advice or guidance would be appreciated.

    • Official Post

    Installation of the storage partition on a USB device was/is because of the people's notion that USB (3.0) sticks handle data faster. Raspberry Pi's only have USB 2.0 ports, and the internal engine doesn't even reach full USB speed. Using /storage on USB can be a plus if you use larger drives, be it a HDD or SSD.

    In my view, sd cards or usb sticks have the same problem: they don't have TRIM support like SSDs do, so they will wear out sooner or later. SSDs/HDDs of course are in a different price category.

    Quote from Klojum


    Installation of the storage partition on a USB device was/is because of the people's notion that USB (3.0) sticks handle data faster. Raspberry Pi's only have USB 2.0 ports, and the internal engine doesn't even reach full USB speed. Using /storage on USB can be a plus if you use larger drives, be it a HDD or SSD.

    In my view, sd cards or usb sticks have the same problem: they don't have TRIM support like SSDs do, so they will wear out sooner or later. SSDs/HDDs of course are in a different price category.


    Thanks for feedback on the different technoligies. If you were going to install LibreELEC on new RPi3 would you just stick it all on the microSD card or would you use a separate USB for Storage, I'm still not sure which method would be better in the long term.

    • Official Post

    For simple installation and usage, using an SD card only is enough.

    But most SD cards / USB sticks have a relative short life span. Sooner or later they will fail. There are SD cards designed for video surveillance and dashcams that have a longer/better 'quality of life' as the higher number of disk writes. They cost more as well, of course.

    One installation option for the long term would be to attach a SSD to your RPi and run LibreELEC from that. AFAIK, you should be able to boot the RPi from a USB device now with the latest firmwares. But an SSD is also in a different price category than a SD card is. The SSD is also faster in terms of write speed.

    Quote from Klojum


    But most SD cards / USB sticks have a relative short life span. Sooner or later they will fail.


    Sooner or later everything fails. If that's after 6 months it's an issue; if it's a few years not so much. I've yet to have an sd card fail in a pi - although I've had a couple of (identical) usb3 sticks break. I'm not attaching statistical significance to that.

    Edit: it used to be recommended in many places to stick storage on a usb stick, because there was a bug that caused corruption in sd cards. That hasn't been the case for a few years. I switched back at that time from usb3 sticks to a good sd card and didn't notice a performance difference.

    Edited once, last by trogggy (April 20, 2017 at 10:59 PM).

    Thanks all for the great feedback. I will use just the microSD card for the new RPi3 for my daughter and see how it goes. It's much easier to do as well which is good.