Today I moved my HA installation to an SSD. That worked fine, initially, but within a few hours I had a malformed database twice! That was actually what I was trying to avoid by switching from SD to SSD…
The SSD is a Verbatim Vi560 S3 SATA III M.2 SSD (256 GB). I am starting to suspect that it is too power hungry for the Pi 4, especially during boot or other heavy read/write operations. It wouldn’t even boot at all with all other USB peripherals attached (a serial-to-USB adapter, an RFXcom transceiver and a Zigbee stick). After I moved those to a powered hub, the Pi booted properly. Note that I use the official Raspberry Pi 3A power supply for the Pi.
Is this a common issue? Are there any SSDs known to be particulary energy efficient for situations like these?
I do indeed see “undervoltage detected” messages every few hours in the host’s log. Even without the SSD by the way?! Strange that this happens with the official power supply. What would be a better one, any recommendations?
Sum upp … imagine that the “official” recommended power-supply is a “minimum” for a standard board.
Then you add,and add, and add peripherals , some might like/prefer i.e 5A / or V, etc. etc.
To get a grip of your approx. needs, plug it all in on a metered plug, check on your mobile app, Power/mA - consumption … or read the manuals for the various peripherals you “connect” to your Board / power-supply
Edit: I never had a PI4, regardless i would always prefer separate power-supply for i.e board / SSD / and other equipment that have high variations on it’s consuming pattern.
I think I have it working now (fingers crossed). I bought a better power supply, but what seems to have done the trick is the following: I connected the power cable to the RPi’s own USB-C port rather than the one from my Pi+SSD enclosure, which is connected to the pins of the Pi (via a power switch). Apparently something was limiting the current in that path.