Recursive DNS and SDHC Failure

General Customizing Pi-hole
1

I just turned on unbound this morning to try it out. However, I'm a little worried about the cache overworking my SDHC card. I have had SDHC failures in the past where I had to rebuild my server (Plex Server) so am a little concerned about too much writing on my SDHC card. By the way I'm using Kingston 16GB Micro SDHC's 80MB/s devices.

Should I be worried about this?

Thank you

Greg

2

My opinion - no. The bit of caching that unbound does that may result in a few SD card writes is not going to damage your card. Most of the cache is in memory.

One thing you can do the next time you buy SD cards - get bigger cards, which spread out the writes over more locations. I haven't seen any studies showing how this extends the life of the card, but the cost delta for a larger card is typically quite small. I use mostly 32 GB SanDisk Ultras, with a few 64 GB tossed in the mix.

3

You can always get a cheap SSD.

4

Thanks for the info. For some reason, I was just assuming that the cache writes would be stored on "disk" rather than in memory. But memory makes sense when you think about it.

Appreciate your reply.

GTruck

5

A cheap SSD may not be very high quality. You can't get much cheaper than $7 US for a 32 GB card that will last many years at minimum.

6

I don't understand how I could use a "cheap" SSD. Would this be a SSD attached to one of the USB ports? On my Raspberry Pi Plex server, I have a 2TB USB hard drive connected to store my media. In addition, most of the volatile Plex data is also stored on the drive. But that still does not stop the boot SDHC card from dying at some point in time.

So how would I use the SSD?

Thanks.

7

Save the money from an SSD and buy an SDcard that isn't a cheap knockoff. And for even more chance of long-life for the SDcard, buy a decent power supply with a good USB lead.

8

And what do you consider to be good SDcard? I have been using Kingston Canvas Select 16GB cards. And all my USB power supplies are Rasperry Pi branded (white with RPi logo on them).

9

You can get 32GB cards for less than $10USD. Samsung EVO / Pro Endurance.

Or just boot with USB.