Would be so nice if you can install HASS.IO on USB Drive or SSD. No more SDCard corruptions. I cant think about any reason why its not already there… When you have a big setup there will be lot of read/write actions, and everybody know that a SDCard is not made for this…
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Neither is a USB stick.
A USB stick will fail but shortly after the microSD as the memory type is virtually the same (maybe you get a touch more heat dissipation from a USB as it’s bigger (surface area to cool from) and not as closed in (snugly fitting wrapper of a microSD sleeve)
To have the best of both, you are (as recommended by others above) best to go for a USB 3.0 connected SSD.
The Pi 4 does NOT yet support booting from USB, it’s a problem they (Rasberry Pi Foundation) are aware of and are working on.
The best you can do is have the boot file on the microSD and have it load the system from the USB.
In theory the SD is never (apart maybe from updates) written to and there should thus be a dramatic reduction in wear, improving over all reliability AND Speed (due to the USB 3.0 and SSD)
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After two microSD cards was broken on my PI3 + hassio, I was trying to use an USB HDD, but it doesn’t start with the hassio image, even if some tasks were already done, it open the image file and made the necessary partitions on the HDD, but that’s all, nothing else. It wold be nice to have this working, if we want to count on such system, the SD card seems to be the weakest point.
whoo hoo !
Raspberry Pi4 USB mass storage beta announced:
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Have you got your PI3 working with USB HDD ?
I’m asking as I have just enabled USB Mass Storage Boot on my PI3 and it works perfectly with the PI Linux, but when I flash my Seagate HDD with Home Assistant standard image, it’s don’t boot. 
No it doesn’t work yet and this is related to HA. I used Raspbian booting from HDD, then install HA over it.
Hi @Mihai,
Thanks.
For anyone else searching for the installation instrucutions - see below:
How to install Home Assistant Core
How to configure autostart
Hi *,
any progress on this?
The new bootloader seems to be out of beta since last month.
I tried hassos_rpi4-64-4.15 today on a Pi4-4GB without success.
Best
Ck
So… is this possible meanwhile? This thread is long as hell and not marked as solved, latest posts also don´t give clear indications…
How can I use HASS OS without SD/directly from SSD on my Raspberry Pi 4?
On Pi 4 HassOS 5 64bit, it works for me.
I have tested and can confirm the following:
- RPi3+ : HA start from USB HDD, at least the 64 bit version without card;
- RPi4: Raspbian cand now boot from USB HDD without card, but EPROM must be updated.
I didn’t test yet, but I am quite sure HA can be used on RPi4 - USB HDD, as Beduir mention.
I am verry happy with this and appreciate it!
Well,
HA has come a long way and it demands more resources as you get more devices, automations and etc which put more strain on your tiny SD card no matter how you spin it.
Official support for HA using SSD on rpi with boot support and all the other bells and whistles would be a much appreciated feaure.
There are ways to actually achieve that but it is a time consuming process. Furthermore, you can crash unexpectedly losing all your precious data.
Hope HA team pays attention to this.
I think the Home Assistant team is paying attention to this. The problem could be a hardware or software issue. I’m not sure that a conclusion has been reached. There are some very good forums with directions on how to boot the Pi4 using an SSD. Some Pi4 work with SSD and certain controllers and some don’t. For right now, the recommended solution is to boot off of the SD and move everything else to he SSD. Again, there are directions on how to do this. I am booting off the SSD using OS 5.4 and everything else at the latest version and my pi4 boots and runs with no issue. If I update to 5.10 or 5.11 my pi freezes in less than a day (see github issue 1119 for further info).
Ha, good old #1119. Still no progress I assume? 
I think that there is some progress. Looks like (I’m still guessing) that it is kernel / EEPROM related. Raspberry Pi has just implemented the Linux 5.10 kernel in their new software releases and hopefully a build for Home Assistant will be done with this same Kernel for Home Assistant to test. We shall see. The boot from USB has been a lot more difficult than people thought. I’m hoping that they keep working on it and the fix is not “go back to the SD” as we do not support USB boot from PI. I have been following the Pi4 since it was released and the hope for all was to get away from the SD due to reliability issues. Little did I know that the SSD would be worst.
I get that but if you are only booting from the SD card and all the data is on a usb ssd then I don’t see the issue except of course for the OCD among us (like me)
I agree that it should not be an issue. It is just hard to get over all the “don’t use an sd card as it is not if it will fail, but when”.
That is only if the database is on the SD card. An SD card only booting the system will last forever
I have had too rated sd cards fail with no database. Much earlier than the mtbf rating. More than one failed on my android tablet, had a couple in a camera. I agree it should last forever, but it they did not (at least for me).