Problems with SD cards -

[decibel]

I have been playing with Raspberry Pis for a few years now - all very nice but I have noticed several problems with the SD cards.

I have several cards now which are either unwritable (but readable), have odd-ball partitions I can't change or are showing as "Inaccessible" in Windows Explorer and also in Balena Etcher and Rufus..

I have tried (and failed) to reformat them with MiniTool Partition Wizard but I am now wondering whether you guys have better luck with some other software?

[dugimodo]

SD cards aren't really designed as boot devices and have a limited number of write cycles before they become read only. Or at least that's what I've read, never experienced it personally.
My guess is they are worn out. If there's any way to use an SSD instead it'll last much better.

[psycik]

There’s many guides for getting longer life out of SD cards for raspberry pis.

Normally things like moving all logs to ram disk (memory). And changing the types of tasks it does.

[Agent_24]

You could try this to reformat them: https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/

If that doesn't work, they're probably just faulty.

A lot of flash media (especially in budget USB drives) are pretty cheaply made and just don't last very long anyway.
You may want to try higher quality cards in future, perhaps try "high endurance" models, and of course, limit writes as much as possible.

[gary67]

I have had 2 SD cards die in my phone which is why everything is set to backup to google

[decibel]

Yes - you have all confirmed my worst thoughts. all the cards but one are shitte.
I will buy some more cards but no more Raspberry Pi.

I have had a look for alternate SBCs that don't use a SD card but can't find anything suitable. Any suggestions?

[psycik]

odroids etc use eMMC. Much better than sd cards. Have a look for EverythingSmartHome on youtube. He did a quick review of a bunch of single board computers (for home automation), and generally bigger than raspberry pi one. He convered a few that used eMMC instead and the odd one that used m2 ssds.