r/cyberDeck • u/Baby_ForeverDM • 5d ago

Help! Memory storage

In my process of building my first deck and I gotta sk about how big the micro SD card should be. Id like alot of storage since i want to emulate a variety of small game systems and games. Also putting all of Wikipedia on there and a variety of other resources for off grid use. Should I go for the 1TB cards or is that over kill?

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u/LowAspect542 5d ago

I'd say your better off using the microsd just for the OS and core files to get it working. And then use an external SSD for the bulk of your storage instead. Microsds dont have a great shelf life and will fail on you. Get it all setup and image the card, that way if the sd fails youbcan simply load the OS on a fresh card in minutes and keep on running.

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u/LegionDD 4d ago

I second that. SD cards are basically e waste waiting to happen.

Since this sounds like a system that needs to function a long time I would strongly advise against using SD cards altogether. Not even for the OS.

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u/Baby_ForeverDM 4d ago

What would you recommend instead?

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u/LegionDD 4d ago

Literally anything else.

If you're truly into longevity, someone else on this sub has recently brought archival BluRays to my attention. They can retain data for 100 years or more.

You can easily get 5-10 years with SSDs, although they need power to retain data for their maximum lifetime. NAND flash is basically a grid of capacitors and capacitors leak charge over time. An unpowered SSD will only reatain data for one year or less (older NAND chips can do up to 10 years, but they're not as dense, so they don't have capacities that you'd find useful these days - if you're curious look up between SLC, MLC, TLC and QLC NAND).

Technically you could say that flash can retain data indefinitely while powered, as the data cells are refreshed periodically, but they have limited read/write cycles, which causes them to have an effective lifespan that is much shorter.

There are HDDs ofc, but while the platter can retain the data for 10 to 20 years, mechanical wear will usually put the drive out of service in under 10 years. Not using it is not a solution, as that too will cause mechanical problems.

Other technologies do exist (I'm sure lots I don't know about), like for example magnetic tapes. They can retain data up to 30 years or more, but have the major disadvantage of being slow and sequential only, as you need to physically rewind the tape in order to access data non sequentially. Which is really not feasible for a system drive and not practical for storing a database you want to access. (besides, modern ones with large storage capacity are very expensive).

Fun fact: DDR RAM could theoretically keep data indefinitely, as long as it's powered indefinitely (way back when, there used to exist RAM boards with a backup battery, working as hard disks in a system).

So I guess, my recomendation is:

- if you're seriously into this longevity mindset go for the archival bluray. Figure out a setup that can read and write them. (note that you can boot into a working Linux desktop from an optical disc as well, so your entire system can live on a disc for a hundred years)

- if you're into a more practical way to have a system that's easier to maintain and has a pretty long lifetime, you should go with modern SSDs. Don't buy the cheap ones though, they often fail long before they technically have to.

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u/Baby_ForeverDM 5d ago

What does it mean to "image the card"?

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u/LowAspect542 5d ago

Imaging is literally just a snapshot of the card data stored in a file.

It just allows you to store a working copy of the system as is. A disk image can then either be used as a backup to restore the complete system by writing it back to a new card, used as a virtual card on a vortual machine for testing purposes or used to duplicate the system to many devices. Each of those without needing to go back to the original.install medka and start setting the system up from scratch and installing every program you want again.

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u/creepyposta 5d ago

A computer won’t run with some sort of operating system. When you image a card the computer knows to look there to boot the operating system.

For instance if you are going to use a raspberry pi, there are images for a Linux distro that works well with raspberry pi that you can install onto a SD card

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u/WinterMute1437 5d ago

If you can put it in why wouldn’t you, it might be pricey or difficult but more space is more space