Some days the universe hands you a problem so small and stupid that, for a split second, you wonder if you’re actually losing it. That was me this week, trying to load Debian 13 onto a Raspberry Pi.
I had all the right parts and tools
Everything should have worked. Fresh image. Clean SD card. A process I’ve done a hundred times. But every attempt to flash the card ended in the same weird flicker‑and‑fail. I even tried Armbian half a dozen times just to rule out the OS. Same result, glitch, and creeping feeling that something was off.
That’s when the diagnostic side of me finally kicked in.
Follow one simple rule
When you’re dealing with computers, Pis, or any plug‑and‑play system, the rule is simple:
Don’t panic. Diagnose with parts. Swap components. Trust the process.
So I did. New microSD? Still failed. Different system? Same issue.
Zeroing in on the issue
At that point, the problem wasn’t the card, the Pi, or the image. It had to be the reader or the cable feeding it.
Sure enough, the culprit was a faulty USB‑C cable. It looked fine. It worked just enough to fool me. But every so often it would flicker, drop connection for a heartbeat, and corrupt the write. One new cable later, everything flashed perfectly and the Pi booted like nothing ever happened.
There’s a lesson in this
Cords, readers, cards, and hard drives, fail. Hardware ages. Nothing lasts forever.
And if you don’t have backups—of your backups—you’re gambling with your own time and sanity.
So here’s the reminder I needed this week, and maybe you do too:
Back up your back up.