Best microSD Cards for Raspberry Pi

[Admin]

We tested ten different microSD cards on three different Pi models to help you find the fastest one for your Raspberry Pi.

Best microSD Cards for Raspberry Pi : Read more

 

[Bigalow]

I love write-ups about micro SD card benchmarks. I notice a big difference when using them on a Raspberry Pi. However, it seems like the article has wrong link regarding the Samsung Evo Plus card. All the other links, are for a 32GB card, while the Evo Plus link @ Amazon is for a 128GB. So, the 32GB Evo Plus micro SD cards cost even less than the listed price of $24.94. They're $8.05 at Amazon at this moment. If you can find the older 32 GB Samsung Evo + micro SD cards, where they print a "+" symbol instead of spelling out the word "Plus", those are even faster. But they're getting hard to find and have largely been replaced by the "Plus" versions. I see that the article's link to Dell show a picture of the "+" cards, but I'd be surprised if that were true. I'd bet a nickle that you get a "Plus" card instead. If you want top performance for your Raspberry Pi 4, try a SSD as your root drive - they're nearly 10x faster. If you want top performance for your Raspberry Pi 3, look into overclocking the Pi's card reader, you can get basically 2x increase in speed, but there's a caveat or two. In any case, thanks for the article and good find on the Silicon Power micro SD cards.

 

[TCA_ChinChin]

It is really quite useful information knowing that such a low cost option actually performs among the best, even compared to the most well known and reputable brands. I'll keep this in mind when I'm shopping for SBCs and SD cards for them.

 

[AdminUser]

I'm using the SanDisk 128GB Extreme PRO USB 3.1 Solid State Flash Drive, $40 @ Amazon - amazing performance. No SD needed with the new beta boot eprom update

 

[jtremblant]

Great article. I have several Rpi 4's 8gb and 4gb, Most of them use fast SSD drives as Evo 860 and Crucial MX500. However, since Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 64 bit does NOT support USB 3 boot yet, I have to rely on slow microsd cards. I only purchase the most expensive and allegedly faster ones like kingston extreme and extreme pro. And after buying 4 32gb silicon power because of your article, difference is highly noticeable compared to my kingston micro sd's mentioned above , they run much faster and they just run on my RPi 4 8Gb smooth as butter without any lags at all. I'm impressed by these low-cost SP cards.

 

[jtremblant]

I'm using the SanDisk 128GB Extreme PRO USB 3.1 Solid State Flash Drive, $40 @ Amazon - amazing performance. No SD needed with the new beta boot eprom update

They are needed if you are using a real OS like ubuntu server/desktop/mate 20.04 LTS 64 bit. There's NO support yet for USB Boot on Rpi 4 other than raspbian 32/64 bit OS's.

 

[jtremblant]

I'm using the SanDisk 128GB Extreme PRO USB 3.1 Solid State Flash Drive, $40 @ Amazon - amazing performance. No SD needed with the new beta boot eprom update

After checking multiple benchmarks about your Sandisk 128gb Extreme Pro USB 3.1 SSFD, you could've got 3x faster reading/writing speeds for the same money with a Kingston A400 240Gb SSD drive and a USB3 to SATA adapter(UASP and Trim support under raspbian) w/ ASM1153E chipset(Eluteng). Take a look:
https://storage.jamesachambers.com/latest/3

 

[ThatMouse]

Does the Pi corrupt the sd card when you power it off? That was my problem with the original Pi. I was told that using a thumb drive prevents this problem.

 

[montyw47]

A number of SD card manufacturers are putting up disclaimers on warranties, They are saying that applications with high write to read ratios are NOT covered under the lifetime warranties! One such being an automobile camera with 2 lenses and image sensors. All the years of touting lifetime warranties now come with an implied disclaimer about writing too many times to an SD card. Anyone hear similar or different? SanDisk, Sony, Lexar, Transcend, etc. what are your official policies on lifetime warranty?

 

[SuperNintendoChalmers]

Does the Pi corrupt the sd card when you power it off? That was my problem with the original Pi. I was told that using a thumb drive prevents this problem.

No, the Pi does not corrupt sdcards when you power off. Someone is telling you nonsense.

If you cut power abruptly, instead of shutting down properly, then you risk corrupting the filesystem just like any other modern computer. This holds true whether you are using an sdcard, USB flash drive, spinning hard drive, or SSD. This is true on Windows, MacOS, Linux, BSD, etc. You can look up "journaling filesystem" and "asynchronous I/O" to understand why this happens.

The Raspberry Pi also needs a very good USB power supply, especially the Pi 3 and Pi 4. The official power supplies are great, there are also a number of known good high-current power supplies on the market. This is effectively the same point as above - if you cut power, you risk corrupting the storage.

In the early days of the Raspberry Pi, it was common to have a very bad time with sdcard storage. This is likely because the market at the time was full of terrible sdcards which didn't like the heavy read/write that running an OS requires, and there was not as much importance placed on having a good power supply so people likely had low power "brownouts" which put the storage at risk.

With good quality storage and a good quality power supply like we can get these days, the Raspberry Pi is very reliable.

 

[ThatMouse]

No, the Pi does not corrupt sdcards when you power off. Someone is telling you nonsense.
...
With good quality storage and a good quality power supply like we can get these days, the Raspberry Pi is very reliable.

The issue is or was that Pi would crash often and there was no way to reboot it. It wasn't a power issue. This turned me off of Pi to use for anything useful.

 

[SuperNintendoChalmers]

The issue is or was that Pi would crash often and there was no way to reboot it. It wasn't a power issue. This turned me off of Pi to use for anything useful.

I find that annoying too. These days you can get "Smart Plugs" which are a wifi-connected power switch. That could offer out-of-band power management for you?

 

[ThatMouse]

I find that annoying too. These days you can get "Smart Plugs" which are a wifi-connected power switch. That could offer out-of-band power management for you?

Cool idea! I may do this for my Windows Plex Server if BIOS supports powering on.

 

[KrisJeff]

We tested ten different microSD cards on three different Pi models to help you find the fastest one for your Raspberry Pi.

Best microSD Cards for Raspberry Pi : Read more

Used several different SD cards and only one passed the Pi speed test. This was a Verbatim16GB Card. However, used 4, all worked at first but corrupted later? I read you article promoting the Silicon Power 3D NAND Card as the best tested. This failed the Pi Test and confirmed as not fast enough? It seems to be really difficult buying something on line? For all I know these could be counterfeit? I think I bought them on Amazon. At the moment I've only got one card operating on Pi and this is the Verbatim 16GB and the only one I have left.
I'm very disappointed that I took your advise and ended up with naff SD cards ? What does one do now? Raspberry Pi recommend an obscure 8GB card, with 16GB is now the norm?
Is there anywhere out there a guaranteed quality card can be purchased? I'm on a pension and can't afford to be wasting dosh on hooky cards.

 

[kanewolf]

I switched all my PI4s to an M.2 SATA in a USB3 enclosure. I get 300MB/s vs 30 with an SD card. New firmware boots from USB. Works great.

 

[KrisJeff]

Kanewolf, thank you. However, there will be several Pi Zeros so I need to keep cheap. I will however bear your suggestion in mind for other future projects.

 

[SuperNintendoChalmers]

What does one do now? Is there anywhere out there a guaranteed quality card can be purchased?

I've completely given up buying sdcards online. It's impossible to separate legitimate product from counterfeit.

I buy only Sandisk Ultra or Extreme from a national office supply chain (my country's equivalent of Staples).

I have killed one card, seemingly by flashing images to it too many times, but otherwise all cards are still operating after many years of use.

8G cards are being phased out with 16G being the smallest available. I just stick with Sandisk. I'd also consider Samsung, but again purchased from a trustworthy store, not online.

 

[KrisJeff]

Yep, I think your right. Just received one Verbatim card and although no probs copying the program etc. It has failed the Raspberry Pi Diagnostic Speed Test. Other Verbatim cards previously passed. Also bought from reputable supplier?

 

[Findecanor]

No, the Pi does not corrupt sdcards when you power off. Someone is telling you nonsense.

If you cut power abruptly, instead of shutting down properly, then you risk corrupting the filesystem just like any other modern computer.

Better to say directly that the SD card could get corrupted if you turn off the power without having let the OS do a shutdown first — which is what people meant.

Some cases come with a button that connects to a GPIO pin for initiating shutdown, with circuitry to turn off power afterwards.
But the Pi should have come with such a solution out-of-the box, IMHO.

 

[ThatMouse]

Better to say directly that the SD card could get corrupted if you turn off the power without having let the OS do a shutdown first — which is what people meant.

Some cases come with a button that connects to a GPIO pin for initiating shutdown, with circuitry to turn off power afterwards.
But the Pi should have come with such a solution out-of-the box, IMHO.

Right but it's not just power cycling, it's crashes too. Has this been solved in later gen Pi? For me to consider the Pi again, it needs to survive a power cycle anyway or it's not that useful.

 

[kanewolf]

Right but it's not just power cycling, it's crashes too. Has this been solved in later gen Pi? For me to consider the Pi again, it needs to survive a power cycle anyway or it's not that useful.

Any computer is possible to be corrupted by an unexpected power outage. Use a UPS with monitoring to allow the PI to shutdown gracefully prior to the battery being exhausted.

 

[theofficialgman]

Another disappointing showing of a SD card review roundup. Missing by far the most important and influential SD cards, that being the obvious best by all metrics Samsung Pro Plus and Samsung Pro Ultimate cards. There isn't any contest between the cards tested here and them. Don't update old articles if you don't also update the metrics with modern cards.

Bottom line, buy the samsung pro plus or pro ultimate. It wins on all metrics while still being the same or similar price.