CPi Panel PC Lite Models are Upgrading to 32GB SD Cards

The standard SD card capacity for CPi Panel PC (Lite models) is being upgraded from 8GB to 32GB. Moving forward, Lite units will ship equipped with the Raspberry Pi 32GB SD card.

Why the Change?

The SD card market has shifted decisively toward higher capacities, rendering 8GB cards a low-volume niche, and a less desirable option.

• Software Demands: Modern OS installations are increasingly leaving less room for additional data partitions on an 8GB card, forcing developers to make unnecessary compromises when creating the OS image.
• Supply Chain Stability: Lower-volume SKUs are increasingly likely to face unpredictable availability and higher costs.
• Cost-Efficiency: Mainstream 32GB cards now offer a superior price-to-performance ratio compared to the existing 8GB cards.

By migrating to 32GB, we are aligning with current market trends to ensure better availability, increased storage headroom, and improved performance.

Impact

Increased Capacity

The jump to 32GB provides ample headroom for larger partitions, OS features, user data, and long-term data logging without the risk of storage exhaustion.

Performance Gains

The new 32GB A2 microSD card (rated C10/U3/V30) offers improved performance over the existing 8GB SD card. It supports DDR50/SDR104 with command queueing, delivering random 4KB IOPS at:

• Reads: 3,200–5,000 IOPS
• Writes: 1,200–2,000 IOPS

Compatibility

Existing 8GB OS images can be installed to the larger 32GB SD cards, but to ensure the SD card's capacity is fully utilized, use the raspi-config utility to expand the file system.

Longer Backup & Restore Times

Larger capacity SD cards will take longer to perform full disk backups and restores. However, employing the following tools can actually make your workflow more efficient:

• Partition Tables: Use sfdisk --dump to save your layout to a portable text file for easy restoration.
• File-Level Archives: Use fsarchiver to back up filesystem contents. It supports multi-threaded compression, and only archives utilized capacity which significantly reduces backup and restore times compared to traditional disk images.

Endurance and Longevity

To optimize for storage endurance and longevity, a read-only filesystem configuration is recommended. This reduces background writes that accumulate during normal operation. Keeping the root filesystem read-only and redirecting volatile paths (for example, logs and temp directories) to RAM or a separate writable partition materially reduces write volume and flash wear.

The larger 32GB capacity also helps wear-leveling algorithms spread writes across a larger surface area, which can extend storage longevity.

For use cases that require maximum endurance, SLC (Single-Level Cell) SD cards should be preferred.