HASS.IO -> transfer from SD card to SSD or USB

Installation Home Assistant OS
322

I wanted to let everyone know that if you’re about to buy an enclosure for an SSD, choose one with UASP compatibility/ability since this can give even better speeds over USB3. See here: UASP makes Raspberry Pi 4 disk IO 50% faster

Separately, I’m trying to figure out which SSD to go for. Can’t decide if the amazingly priced Crucial BX500 120 GB without a DRAM cache would be more than enough or if the lack of DRAM cache would ultimately hinder performance in real-world Home Assistant use. For £20 it’s a very compelling price. Anyone have any other ideas for an SSD?

1 Like
323

I am having this exact same problem with using a Raspberry Pi 3b as well but with a SSD. The pi is already configured to boot from the ssd but when I plug in the pi the activity light flashes once and then nothing else happens. And like you, an image of Raspberry Pi OS boots just fine on the SSD.

324

For anyone interested in testing pi4 USB boot (as well as pi4 8GB), Dev build 5.0 of HA OS is now available. https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/releases

6 Likes
325

I maybe missing something there but I didn’t see an image for RPi 4 -64 yet listed. Newbie here though lol.

326

Does this mean you can restore that image straight onto a usb ssd (with BalenaEtcher for instance), plug it into PRI4 and boot?

327

I also looked at the releases but no RPI images yet?

328

The image is building. It should be available within a few hours.

329

I burned the Beta V5.0 RPI4 64 image and the OS is booting up from SSD.
Does the image only contains the OS or also homeassistant core?

Docker is running, but the docker ps command only gives me the following running containers:

hassiio_multicast
hassio_cli
hassio_dns
hassio_supervisor

No running instances of homeassistant core?

docker images shows that te image (raspberrypi4-64-homeassistant) is present but not started?

Am i missing something?

edit:

issued command: core rebuild

results in starting eudev-3.2.9, but exits with

Error: Unknow Error, see logs

Edit:

Logs shows:

ERROR (MAINThread) [supervisor.homeassistant] Home Assistant has crashed!

330

I am running a RPi 4 4GB with a STARTECH USB 3.0 to 2.5" SATA cable w/UASP and a 120GB KINGSTON A400 SSD. (tested first with Pi OS boot with latest updates, then ran the new image, I connected a monitor and keyboard to watch for issues) .
Been up and running a few hours with my own mistake of corrupting my DB, again(practicing transfers between 3 systems and did a “wipe and restore” this time). But there wasn’t alot to worry about yet as I am learning and expect this before I fully migrate from ST. Restarts are much improved, mostly improved responses all around.
Good luck

331

So there’s a noticeable speed improvement for Home Assistant restarts when using Home Assistant Operating System compared to Raspberry Pi OS?

332

@123 Home Assistant OS on SSD is faster then the HA OS on SD Card on the same Pi. I tried a Docker install of HA supervised with Pi OS on SSD that was quick as well. Although the best experience I have had is with the HA OS on a VM, but I am having issues of the VM Hardening upon reboots, which I can’t figure out.

333

I dit with Balena Etcher putting image hassos_rpi4-5.0.img.gz to a Western Digital 120 GB SSD from my Mac mini, then i transferred the SSD with usb3 to Sata cable to my Raspberry pi4 (4GB) and booting, no response, tried with 192.168.1.30:8123 on Firefox after a while but no response.

334

@bonestaak Don’t you first need to upgrade the firmware of the Raspberry Pi 4 itself, so it can actually boot of from USB?

335

I reflashed the USB again and added sd_poll_once=on to dtparam in config.txt and to my suprise it is now running.
Maybe a bad flash Earlier or the change in the config made It working.
I succesfully restored my snapshot and it was running :grinning:

Did some testing more, like restarting and rebooting. No significant differance in speed with homeassistant restarts.
During my first reboot cycle the first problem already showed up. Homeassistant seemed to be running in the background (logging to nas was active and homekit was running) but the webpage didn’t respond. Also the webpage from the unify plugin did not respond.

Seems that during reboot something was corrupted, no errors in logs!

The Beta is not stable enough for me, so waiting for a new release with stability fixes.

I use a X825 from Geekworm as SSD shield with a crucial BX500 250 GB, so i should have full USB3.0 speed!

336

Yes you need to update the bootloader as described in the article you referenced.

337

Hmm that works until vgencmd bootloader_version 16 juli (all right, thats good but then:
7. Copy your microSD card to your USB drive or burn a new Raspberry Pi OS image to your USB drive. Note that NOOBS, which has a recovery partition,
When i put a new image to the SSD drive (Hassos) you can not read or write to that drive with a Mac (and i think even not with a PC) So maybe i can copy my microsd card from my Raspberry to the connected SSD (how?) but how to get Hassos to that drive then?

338

After updating the RPI4 firmware: can’t you just create a backup image of your microSD (for instance with ApplePiBaker) and then restore that image with BalenaEtcher onto the usb SSD?

I do this every now and then when my microSD becomes sluggish (nearing corruption) and replace it with a new one. I just create an image with ApplePiBaker, restore that with BalenaEtcher on a new microSD and just boot RPI4 back up and all continues as if nothing changed.

Or maybe I’m understanding your problem wrong.

339

After updating the RPI4 firmware: can’t you just create a backup image of your microSD (for instance with ApplePiBaker) and then restore that image with BalenaEtcher onto the usb SSD?
Yes maybe, but then is the old raspberry os op the drive and we must have Hassos on the drive and when i put Hassos on the SSD drive there is no way to put : **.dat and .elf files from the /boot folder of your microSD card (the one you just updated to the latest version of the OS) into the /boot folder on your USB drive as the drive is completely invisible for Mac (and i think also for PC) after an image of Hassos is placed on the SSD drive.

340

I understand your problem now. Yes, the boot partition is invisible on Mac. I encountered that myself a while ago when trying to change the config.txt located there. You can access it on Windows though! I installed Windows using Bootcamp specifically for that back then (now I have a dedicated Windows PC).

341

I did the following:
Ensure the pi is updated to the latest eeprom update. Download the HA OS version 5.0 for SSD Boot and burn that version to SSD. Update the SD HA OS to version to 5.0 and take a snapshot if all is working. Download it and install SSD and wait. A monitor attached to Pi helps follow progress. After it boots up check your IP and install as per normal. Use Samba and upload the snapshot from the SD version, restart it all and it should be up and running. it is Beta so be warrned