Maximum size of boot MicroSD for RockPro64 and Pinebook Pro

[commiecam]

I'm getting ready to boot a RockPro64 on Armbian 22.05 and. as soon as it arrives, my new Pinebook Pro as well.  I've looked at the wiki pages, but nowhere can I find a maximum size limit for the boot microSD card.  Can anyone:

1.   Advise me if here is a size limit recognised by either system for MicroSD cards?

2.   Can a MicroSD card which is used to boot the system be partitioned, or must it be left as a single partitioned drive?

I've decided not to add an NVME card to the Pinebook Pro because, compared to the supplied drive or an SD card, they seem to be power hogs.  For its intended uses the laptop needs battery life and storage size far more than memory read-write speed., so I'm hoping to use a single, huge MicroSD as its primary disk drive.

Any suggestions would be most welcome.  Perhaps I'm being overly cautious, but I can still remember HP-1000 computers, which had odd maximum addressing problems on very large disk drives.

Thanks!

[reukiodo]

The PineBook Pro should come with a 64GB eMMC and 16MB SPI, and I'd suggest using that for booting. I can use a 1TB uSD card without any issues for data (no partitions, just btrfs), though I have not attempted to boot from it. I would recommend TowBoot on the SPI (for basic boot menu), OS on eMMC, and data on M.2 or uSD.

I don't have a RockPro64 to test with so I can't speak to that. I have a Rock64, though there is no TowBoot build for that yet, so it boots directly from uSD.

[KC9UDX]

The eMMC is significantly faster than the micro-SD card. I have 64 Gb eMMC modules in all my Pinebook Pros and a RockPro64. Mind you I'm not a resource hog. I have heard that you can get a 128Gb eMMC. I can't speak for SD card sizes, I don't have any that are larger than 256Gb, and they all work.

You can partition the eMMC and SD cards however you like. Of course, I run NetBSD, so if there are Linuces that won't allow that, I have no idea.

The most notable difference between the PBP and the RP64 for me is that I can overheat my PBPs, I cannot overheat the RP64 in the Pine 64 case.

[Dendrocalamus64]

was going to reply, but this is a 2 year 4 month old thread that just got necrobumped, so I doubt the OP is reading it.

My PBP won't boot from Tow Boot on the SPI.
You can now get 256 GB eMMCs, and I wouldn't use anything less for a new install.