Wrong, been running my hassio for over a year with no sd card failure. And yes, I have the database on the SD card.
Statistically speaking (you can Google for complaints about this issue), with intense I/O operations, SD card failure on the Rpi is mostly a problem of when, not of if. There are, obviously, other components of Rpi that fail, too; however, SD/MicroSD card is the most common.
It might work for you for another year or it might equally fail tomorrow morning (and it is not the grudge of the users on this site that kills it 
).
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Iām currently using a Asus X750JB laptop that runs Ubuntu. Then I virtualize Plex, Home Assistant, and MythTV. Initially I thought this was a great way to go, laptops are designed to be power misers and I technically have a built in UPS with the battery the laptop has.
I decided on the Asus because it supports WoLā¦so if I lost power and the battery ran dead, once power came back on I could just ssh in to my home Mikrotik and issue a WoL command.
Unfortunately, Asus engineers were idiots when they designed the WoL featureā¦once actual AC power is lost and the battery goes deadā¦WoL stops working until physically press the power button pretty much defeating the whole āpower back up remotelyā when 1/2 across the world conceptā¦UGH!
And the BIOS in the Asus laptop has no power on automatically after power loss feature.
So now Iām looking a NUC too since all the ones Iāve looked at have auto power on after power loss. At the moment Iām just trying to decide if I want a basic Celeron NUC for HA or something with more horse power under the hood to replace the Asus and the virtualization Iām doing.
Iām going to revive that old thread to ask you for a few things 
I see that SSD is attached via internal usb, right? doesnāt the t620 have m.2 connector? I was assuming that the little thingy mounted on the left side of internal usb connector is m.2 disk?
also - did you try to run any video camera-based integration or software on it? I mean motioneye for motion detection on cameras connected to HomeAssistant or maybe some object/people recognize software?
Iām asking, as I found used t620 for dirt cheap [basically with a price almost the same as RPi3 that Iām running now], of course without disks, so Iāll have to add more funds to it [my SD card installed in RPi was also added later soā¦] and Iām really considering the jump to this if thereās enough horsepower. besides that - my system is running well.
and right now Iām using:
- RPi3 with 16GB Sandisk Ultra A1 sdcard - for HomeAssistant & cc2531 main coordinator dongle [zigbee2mqtt]
- RPi2 with 16GB Sandisk Ultra A1 sdcard for system and some 64gb Patriot Pendrive - for database, MQTT, AdGuard, GPIO-based garage door sensor
- Netgear WNR3500Lv2 router with TomatoAdvanced and 1TB disk attached - as main network provider & videorecorder for cameras
- couple of RPi0 W based cameras with MotionEyeOS for monitoring [and those perform medicore for on-board motion detection]
No, USB used to power SSD and data is connected to M.2 -> SATA adapter. You could see three SATA cables running to two 3.5" disks and to SSD.
Iām currently running video surveillance software, but it only records video. Iāve implemented motion detection directly from cameras, so no need for unnecessary CPU load. This t620 setup proven as dead stable, cheap, 10/10, would setup again
oh, I see! didnāt know there is m.2->sata adapter
ok, so in worst case scenario Iāll be stuck with the same solution as now, but with more stable [thanks to ssd] hardware. not as ideal, but also not a deal breaker so Iām gonna sleep with that and make my decision afterwards
thanks!
Donāt forget, that youāll get x86 arch, HDD and RAM expandability
thatās true. not that Iām needing more space right now, but as usual - if thereās an option, Iāll probably find a way to ulitize it especially that Iām starting to think about putting more than just HA on it.
oh, last question - how is it behaving in case of power shutdown? can it be configured easily to autostart when powerās back?
If I recall correctly, it has setting in BIOS what to do (restore last state, keep off or turn on) in case of power restore. It is not very critical to me, as power outages are quite rare in my area, and I have UPS just in case.
I had maybe one power outage last year, so mostly it isnāt an issue too - but I like to know just in case. thereās always that one scenario, that couple of hours after youāll start your vacation everything goes south and thereās nothing that can be done without being next to the hardware haha
I recently updated my NUCi3ās BIOS, and it does have a setting for default state at power-up. I run this NUCi3 totally headless, so I had to bring it downstairs with a monitor to install the BIOS, at which time I made certain to enable this BIOS setting. We endure three or four power failures yearly, and prior to making this change, I always had to go upstairs and turn the HA NUC back on after an outage. 
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Iāve been running HA on a Raspberry PI since late last year mostly just to play around with so wasnāt too concerned about losing the SD card and data but recently Iāve started integrating more and more and now have quite a lot of stuff automated and working well so its quickly become quite a critical system that I now need running on a reliable platform.
Iām inclined to go with an Intel NUC and SSD butā¦ Where I live we have very frequent power outages that last for 2 hours at a time, I currently run all of my wireless routers, fibre router and Raspberry PI off a pair of 35ah batteries with various 12V to 5V converter and 12 to 24V converter for my main Mikrotik router which does passive POE out to the other wireless routers, this can comfortably keep all of this equipment up for probably 2 days so its a reliable option for me.
The NUC has a 19V power supply if Iām not mistaken but Iāve read that it can run from as low as 12V in which case Iād be able to plug it into my existing battery backup system.
Does anyone have a similar setup and can they confirm that it can run off 12V?
Iād prefer not to have to get another 12V to 19V or similar converter because a. it probably wont have the desired output amperage and b. puts an added strain on the system and c. if it can in fact run off 12V then it would be pointless
Oh and on a side note would it be as simple as restoring a snapshot onto the NUC once I have HA installed? Not a train smash if this cannot be done but would mean a ton of saved time if this was in fact the case.
Yes, it works at 12V (at least with a Celeron J4005 NUC; Iām unsure about the more power hungry i5 or i7 versions).
I have the NUC running HA connected to a switched power supply and a 12Ah battery (see below). Havenāt tried to fully discharge it, but I have HA turning off after 30 min of running on battery. 35Ah should be sufficient for more than 4 hours with a low power NUC.
You can try to simply make a copy of the entire config directory on a network computer (then copy it back to a clean state machine; but it is likely youāll have some headaches until fully restored). Or even better, use a Google Drive backup if running one of the more user friendly flavors:
Hi Petrica
Thanks for your reply and apologies for the late response. I installed the backup software you suggested it works really nicely.
Iāll report back on powering the NUC when I manage to track one down but fairly confident that it will run ok.
You could also try looking for a laptop powered by 12V (N4000 Celeron is usually fanless, so less power consumption to deal with) and flash Intel NUC Hassos image or generic Docker (to be able to install additional stuff beside HA).
If able to disable screen by hardware switch (or even completely disconnect the screen if feeling sufficiently adventurous 
), then a laptop would grant an additional time on battery compared to a regular NUC.
I actually have an Acer Revo RL85 but its a celeron processor so was a bit worried it wouldnāt be powerful enough, Iāll see if I can get that powered with 12V I can use that then.
OK, so for those interested the Acer Revo RL85 (well the Celeron anyway) is not an option at all, I tried a few times to install Ubuntu and it just hung throughout the various installation stages, I just dont think there is enough horsepower in this package to run Ubuntu and ultimately Home Assistant. I literally had this laying around the house and remember why I never used it, its painfully slow!
It also does not power up at 12V it needs 19V, I sourced a 12V to 19V 5A convertor which I can use elsewhere so it is possible to power it from a battery with this converter.
I then came across a really good deal on an Intel Nuc I3 with 256gb SSD, 8gb ram, keyboard, mouse and mini dp to hdmi convertor for around USD185 so it was a no brainer, Iāll obviously not use anything apart from the NUC itself but still a worthy deal.
I installed Ubuntu on it and was super impressed by how fast it was, best money Iāve spent in a while.
Iāve got home assistant installed under a docker and will play around with it, I like the docker option because I get to play around with a Linux environment again and the NUC comfortably has the capabilities to do other things apart from being dedicated to HA but do think the Hassio image may be the option for me I like the add-ons etcā¦ and also running this on my RPI so would prefer to be able to restore a snapshot.
Anyway I shall continue experimenting and report back for those interested but on face value the NUC is the perfect beast for Home Assistant.
If you are interested in using your NUC for other things, I can recommend Proxmox for running VMs. You then run Home Assistant in a VM and run other VMs as you desire. For example I just recently setup up a instance of Home Assistant (formerly hass.io) as a test environment for helping others here on the forum and to see how I like the add-ons etc. Then I have my production VM on which I run Home Assistant Core in docker and a ādevelopmentā VM on which I run Home Assistant Core in docker where I test new things before they go into production.
A nice plus with Proxmox is that you can easily do a full backup. You backup (on a schedule if you want to) the VM and if your NUC ever dies (we hope not 
), you install proxmox on a new machine, load the backup and you are back exactly where you left off.
Thanks for this post, I installed Proxmox this morning and busy setting up VMās now, definitely a better option for me as it gives me a lot more versatility and I can play around with the different install types and then stick with the one that I like best.
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@Burningstone sorry I know this is off topic but you mentioned that you have both hass.io and Core installed.
I got core working quite easily using a docker but I am struggling to get the hass.io image working and am quite sure Iām doing it right.
Iāve downloaded the image from here
Booted using a live CD with Ubuntu and copied the image to the disk confirm file integrity and then write it using DD to the disk (/dev/sda)
gunzip -c /home/ubuntu/Downloads/hassos_intel-nuc-3.10.img.gz | sudo dd of=/dev/sda
It writes with no errors but when I reboot the VM instance it doesnāt boot, just gets to the part after the BIOS and says booting from hard disk.
Any ideas on where Iāve gone wrong perhaps?
Iād prefer to run the hass.io image, Iām not big on the idea of having Home Assistant installed under a docker under a VM, it would also make it simpler with copying a snapshot across from my RPI install.
Thanks.