nz1

Yesterday I got a new orangepipc+ to replace my orangepipc.
I reused my working sdcard from the orangepipc and used etcher.io to write the new orangepipc+ os. However etcher gave errors when writing to this card, even though it had previously been working. I tried again, this time with the sdcard writer attached to a cheap usb hub. The writing process was much slower, at 1MB/s, however this time etcher finished successfully. I used this card to boot the orangepipc+ and used the sata nand script to write the os to the emmc card, without any problems.
I also as an experiment tried to write the same img to my broken sdcard using the attached usb hub, and this also worked, and etcher gave the same crc32 values with both sdcards.
My thoughts
a) Use etcher
Sdcards are very unreliable, however they can sometimes fix themselves, just like old HDD drives could sometimes decide to come back to life.
c) dd on OSX does not always return errors when writing to sdcards.
d) Use emmc single board computers when possible.
e) Eagerly wait for an install/boot process that does not rely on sdcards, perhaps using fel and usb cables. Or possibly Orange will release boards with small nand chips so that a small boot linux can be used which enables ftp/http installs.