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I want add-on SD card reader/writer/slot/controller in my raspberry pi so that i can keep OS separate from my program. Primary SD card will load OS and work normally and program & data will remain available from add-on card. Please suggest

a) what good hardware extension or component available as add-on card for raspberry pi 3b

b) suitable software available.

OR if i can use USB Pendrive directly because i have USB slots spare. How?

Please note: 1) I am not talking about increase SD card size and 2) not talking about creating separate partition on first SD card.

Thanks

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  • Welcome to the Raspberry Pi flavoured corner of the Stack Exchange network. I see you have read through the tour and I trust you have remembered that we are not going to necessarily say: "buy this product code item from this supplier". I do think I understand what you are asking about and will put up my attempt at an answer shortly...
    – SlySven
    Commented Dec 24, 2018 at 3:16
  • What problem with pendrives do you have exactly? Cannot plug? Cannot see the files on them? Something else?
    – Dmitry Grigoryev
    Commented Jan 7, 2019 at 9:42

3 Answers 3

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You can use USB pendrives as much as you have free USB slots. If you want to keep programs and data on different storrages you can follow Debian - Recommended Partitioning Scheme.

For new users, personal Debian boxes, home systems, and other single-user setups, a single / partition (plus swap) is probably the easiest, simplest way to go.
[..]
For multi-user systems or systems with lots of disk space, it's best to put /var, /tmp, and /home each on their own partitions separate from the / partition.

Following this you must not use separate partitions on the pendrive(s) for /var, /tmp, and /home. You can also use separate directories on one partition for them. You are free how to divide the data(-directories) on partition(s).

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You can use any USB device to boot a 3B, 3B+ or 3A. (some 2Bs even support that).

You can use an SD, USB stick, USB hard drive or USB SSD.

Splitting the boot drive from the base filesystem makes no sense. Adding a drive mounted at /media or /mnt is normal and commonly used.

Go and search on https://raspberrypi.org/forums where there's a massive number of posts about this. There's even a thread on there about running a read-only filesystem.

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If you want to go down the route of specifically using another SDCard type unit for a secondary storage device you can, if I recall correctly, get SPI modules that you can wire up to that bus (three or four signal lines plus a couple for power and ground). I would imagine that they would be available from on-line auction or retail sites.

On the other hand, USB storage devices make the same sort of thing a much easier thing to organise provided you have the available slots and space for the hub if needed as well as a USB flash drive.

Finally, the underlying SoC hardware does have support for a second SD Card interface however I am not sure that that is accessible on anything other than the Compute Module / Compute Module 3 devices which have a lot more of the connections available, it is also not clear to me either what support circuitry will need to be added to make use of that.

Update: I have tracked down the following which might provide some useful information:

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  • yes i was thinking for SPI module or kind of solution. I have free USB slot available but using USB Pendrive will not provide any locking/security to prevent unplug by user. SPI module can be wired and card holder can be adjusted/protected under device chassis. Thanks
    – JPI
    Commented Dec 24, 2018 at 17:51
  • From reading the SOC specs I believe there is a 2nd sdio interface - but there is no software support. Neither is there any support for the SPI interface. I did once contemplate writing a module, but decided it was not worth the effort. If should be much easier to adapt the Arduino FAT code into user space if that is helpful.
    – Milliways
    Commented Dec 25, 2018 at 7:15
  • @Milliways i understand your hint that it is not worth the effort to make own software support (assuming that raspberry pi has SDIO/SPI support). Were you able to safely mount/unmount storage (sd card) to your pi or arduino using your own developed software library? I will mostly rely on this secondary sd card for read operations only.
    – JPI
    Commented Dec 25, 2018 at 7:46

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