SD cards

The Raspberry Pi should work with any compatible SD card, although there are some guidelines that should be followed:

SD card size (capacity)

For installation of Raspberry Pi OS with desktop and recommended software (Full) via NOOBS the minimum card size is 16GB. For the image installation of Raspberry Pi OS with desktop and recommended software, the minimum card size is 8GB. For Raspberry Pi OS Lite image installations we recommend a minimum of 4GB. Some distributions, for example LibreELEC and Arch, can run on much smaller cards. If you're planning to use a card of 64GB or more with NOOBS, see this page first.

Note: Only the Raspberry Pi 3A+, 3B+ and Compute Module 3+ can boot from an SD card larger than 256 GB. This is because there was a bug in the SoC used on previous models of Pi.

SD card class

The card class determines the sustained write speed for the card; a class 4 card will be able to write at 4MB/s, whereas a class 10 should be able to attain 10 MB/s. However, it should be noted that this does not mean a class 10 card will outperform a class 4 card for general usage, because often this write speed is achieved at the cost of read speed and increased seek times.

SD card physical size

The original Raspberry Pi Model A and Raspberry Pi Model B require full-size SD cards. From the Model B+ (2014) onwards, a micro SD card is required.

Troubleshooting

We recommend buying the Raspberry Pi SD card which is available here, as well as from other retailers; this is an 8GB class 6 micro SD card (with a full-size SD adapter) that outperforms almost all other SD cards on the market and is a good value solution.

If you are having trouble with corruption of your SD cards, make sure you follow these steps: