Pi2AES/Volumio - keep killing the SD card

I have had Pi2AES with Volumio running for a couple of weeks, and am now on my 3rd SD card.

Things were fine with the first one but we lost power for a few hours in the night and I could never recognize the unit again. After a lot of hair pulling, I put a new card in, and, relief, it worked fine. I found the Volumio switch to turn it off, I did this on the first night it was installed. Next day, couldn't recognize the unit. Both times, I tried all the usual stuff - rebooting, ethernet, wireless, then finally reformatting and reloading volumio (which I think maybe damages the card). Still, nothing.

So I am now on my 3rd micro SD card. Works fine. Except now I am spooked. How do I not let this one get damaged? Do I disconnect the power? Or turn it off via Volumio? Or ??? How do you guys running this turn the unit off (or do you)? Does this suggest there is something wrong in either the RPi or in the AES?

Thx...

 

Hmm, this may not directly help you, but I've always used my Pi2AES with RopieeXL and have not had any issues at all for the month I've had it (I frequently turn off Pi2AES at night and on in the morning because the lights are bright haha). You seem to be the first person I've read having this issue, so maybe it's anomaly - hope another person can chime in, maybe @Michael Kelly ?

 

Thx...How do you turn yours off? Through the software or unplug it?

 

Please be more specific what you mean by "Still, nothing". What are the symptoms? What lights on the Pi2AES after power up?

It's pretty hard to kill an SD card through normal operations such as reading/writing/formatting, unless there is a hardware fault that damages it. Reformatting should reset it to a clean initial state. If you put the SD card on your computer and reformat it as a normal disk drive, can you read and write files to it normally?

 

Unfortunately it is very easy to kill the SD Card with Volumio. You need to use the shutdown command. We have seen SD Cards get corrupted when power is lost.

 

RopieeXL loads itself into RAM and never does anything with the SD Card while running. This makes it virtually immune to corruption. But, it is not a stand alone player, It is an endpoint to some other system running ROON, or DNLA, UPnP, etc. As such it may not be a viable alternative.

Picore Player (https://www.picoreplayer.org/main_about.shtml) also loads itself into RAM. Although originally designed as an endpoint, like Ropieee, it can be setup for stand alone operation.

 

Using mine with Ropieee as a roon endpoint and never power down. It's connected via Ethernet but worked fine on WiFi when I tested it for a day. Have rebooted it a couple of times since getting it maybe 8 mo ago. No issues that I can recall after putting it all together.

Should I be shutting it down? Didn't think that was important for these sorts of devices.

 

I replaced two SD cards before I even realized there is a shutdown command in Volumio. I select that option and then click power off. I wait for the bit rate signal light to turn off and wait at least a couple of minutes after that light has gone off before I turn off the power to the Pi2AES.

 

This is why I switched to piCorePlayer. A bit more trouble to set up, but smooth running thereafter.

 

I don’t want to guarantee something about software I neither wrote nor had any hand in, but I believe you can shut down that device without worrying about SD card corruption.

Perhaps there is a thread on SBAF for Ropieee questions?

 

I used moOde on a Pi 3 + Pi2AES successfully for quite a while for my work setup, although not using it now because I'm WFH. I used the moOde shutdown option before turning the system off most of the time, but I'm sure it was powered down hard several times without a software shutdown. I just searched the moOde support forums and found some posts on sdcard corruption, though. http://moodeaudio.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=1286

 

Thanks, Michael.

My question was a little unclear, sorry about that. What I intended to ask is not so much if shutting down is OK for software and sd card but rather if it's alright for the hardware (rpi, pi2aes, ram, etc) to leave it on all the time. Since it's all solid state, it seemed like it wouldnt matter so long as it was kept in a reasonably well ventilated location. My preference is to never touch it or shut it down otherwise that's just another thing to remember to do before and after music.

That question comes from being confused at why someone would want to shut this down in the first place other than for the comments noted about bright lights (use masking tape?) or perhaps a little extra power usage.

 

Thx, all. My net take-away is shut down via Volumio, wait a little then unplug. @Michael Kelly does this seem right to you? I had shut it down via Volumio, left it plugged in, and next morning, can't find it on the network (to the person asking what I meant by 'nothing' I mean, Fling can't find the rig online with or without ethernet, no matter what I try)

Any suggestions for alternatives... I run this into Yggdrasil via RCA. Don't want to use USB (would need to upgrade Yggdrasil for that) I think some UI software won't work with Yggdrasil (RopieeeXL doesn't list Yggdrasil as supported, for example)

 

That does not seem right. However, I will tell you in all honesty I do not use Volumio anymore for our internal testing. I use moode audio and have not had any issues that cannot be explained by something I did.

 

There are no long-term benefits to powering down. There are no long-term problems either. Simply user preference.

 

I have a Pi2AES with RopieeeXL driving my Yggdrasil (with AES rather than coax, but that shouldn't make a difference). Works perfectly.

 

Same here with standard Ropieee. I also drive a modi Multibit with the same. Yggdrasil I use AES, and Modi uses coax. I just keep mine on 24x7 generally, but I’ve plugged and unplugged the thing dozens of times (without doing any kind of shutdown) with no issues.

 

No issues so far here as well with RopieeeXL.
PS- I never shut them off.

 

What is this "powering down" of which you all speak?

I've used Volumio for almost 3 years now and never had excessive problems with cards frying - a couple of times when re-writing a new version of the system, but nothing beyond what I'd consider 'normal' card failure rate.

I do (hard) reboot occasionally to reconfigure other parts of my systems, but like @rlow I usually leave both systems (HifiBerry Digi+ recently replaced with Pi2AES on a Pi 3B, Allo MiniBoss on a PiZero) on all the time. I should say though that most of the time I'm using Volumio just as a UPnP renderer, not for the entire playback chain - don't know if that might make a difference.

 

I've cycled through most (all?) of the Pi-based audio Linux distros since I got into digital audio, here's a summary. I tested all of they with 502DAC or Pi2AES.

• Volumio: my first streamer OS (controlled with BubbleUPnP). Never really reliable, got much worse on its big update. Clunky, slow, crashy. Don't recommend for any use case that I've tried.
• PiCorePlayer: lean, fast, robust. Not easy to configure if you want to use it stand-alone with local storage. I had it on my work stand-alone system until un update broke its ability to work without network. I'd recommend it for basic UPnP/DLNA streaming.
• moOde: easy to set up, fairly reliable, works stand-alone. UI is a bit clunky on the Pi 7in touchscreen. Used it on my stand-alone work system, and I will again if/when I go back to the office.
• Ropieee(XL): easy to set up, reliable Roon/AirPlay endpoint. Part of my Roon network at home, just runs, no fuss. If you are a Roon user, this is by far the best choice. Sometimes I need to power things down for rearranging gear on my equipment rack. Never bothered to use the software shutdown.