Installing Home Assistant on a RPi 4b with SSD boot

Just Installed HA 5.10 using the steps on top of this thread.
I used a SSD adapter that is stamped ‘Delock’ and a Kingston A400 240GB SSD and got it to work flawlessly on USB-2
USB-3 won’t work unfortunatly.
I’m not sure its worth to buy a StarTech adapter just for USB-3?

Some hints from this noob for other noobs…
Upon the first boot on SSD I kept checking my IP over https…the vanilla HA install isn’t listening there, so use http:// ;).
Restore can take a while, it took 20 minutes to restore my 48MB snapshot.

Thanks Jörg, this was holding me back to switch to a 8GB RPI 4b with SSD boot but with your confirmation that Esphome should work I’ll will give at a go.

Hi everyone, just bump into this document from Intel explaining the USB3.0 interference in 2.4GHz. It also suggesting the way to mitigate the interference (starting at page 13 -17) which I think it’s worth to try for those having issues.

Just for sharing.

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This is now the 4th time this document is mentioned, might be nice to include it in the first post.

The problem with the Raspberry is the USB3 port being so close to the Wifi chip (it’s a single board computer after all). It might also well be that the USB3 connector itself is badly shielded.

It might be worth a few minutes to experiment with tinfoil as suggested, though. I personally only had problems with Wifi, which were easily resolved by using a wired connection (generally a smart idea). Zigbee works perfectly fine here with my Aeotec stick being not attached directly - would be too wide anyhow.

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Hi everyone, and especially @Jpsy thanks for this guide. Based on the steps provided I’ve installed HA 5.10 / 2020.12.7 on the following list of hardware (I’ve added EAN for reference):

  • Raspberry Board Pi 4B 8Gb (RPI4-MODBP-8GB / EAN: 0765756931199)
  • Raspberry Pi 15.3W USB-C Power Supply (T7730DV / EAN: 0644824914886)
  • Startech SATA to USB Cable with UASP ( USB3S2SAT3CB / EAN: 0650308546962)
  • Kingston SSD 120 GB (SA400S37/120G / EAN: 740617261196)

One small comment on the guide, are the instructions related to “Use raspi-config to set boot config to SSD boot

Both options for Boot Order and Bootloader Version are found under “Advanced Options” (in the main menu) of raspi-config.

Advanced Options --> Bootloader–> latest … etc…
Advanced Options --> Boot Order–>… etc.

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With this SSD setup, would you suggest using locally saved MariaDB as recorder or stock recorder?

I tried Maria on my Pi3 when I thought that HA choked because of DB performance bottlenecks. (I did not realize at first that my system was running out of memory.) With the Pi4 with 8GB the standard Sqlite DB of HA is so fast that I see no reason to replace it. My recorder is set to hold 30 days of history. The DB file is approx. 4GB in size. And it stays fast and responsive.

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Thanks @Egon, guide updated.

Added to the guide. Thanks @tldp, @KCYeoh and all the others who mentioned it.

So the SSD is running fine on USB-2…I had hoped however that the speed of the sensors with increase a bit.
When I used the Tradfri bridge the lights that are triggered by the sensor where always very fast…now there is a lag that I hoped the SSD would cure.

Would USB-3 make a difference on this?
The RPI is sleeping with a low load and plenty of ram available so thats not the culprit I suspect…

I am quite sure that the SSD link speed has nothing to do with the effect that you are witnessing. Any possibility that your Zigbee bridge’s signal is disturbed by the Pi’s USB3 ports or a nearby WLAN access point? Is your Pi connected to your LAN by wire (strongly recommended) or by WLAN?

The pi itself is close to a wifi router, but the zigbee device is connected on a long usb kabel and 1.5 meters away from everything…

… and the Pi connected through a LAN cable?

BTW: Zigbee radio some 1.5 m away from a WLAN AP can still very much saturate the radios antenna gate and impede communication. As an example I had to shield one of my KNX motion detectors with tin foil that was 2.5 m away from an AP and even had a wall in-between.
You could rule that out by temporarily placing the Pi and the Zigbee radio somewhere else but still close to the next Zigbee device. And Pi connected through LAN cable.

It is connect by Lan cable, I’ll see if moving it away have some effect, thanks.

Updated my RPi4 4GB from HA 5.3 to HA 5.10 believing that it would be stable. Unfortunately after a few hours HA completely froze and it was unreachable.

The exact same thing has happened with all the other newer versions of HA, and it seems that the issue is still present on the HA 5.10.
Anyone else having similar issues with USB3 SSD and HA 5.10?

Hardware used:

  • RPi4 4GB
  • Ugreen USB3.1 Gen2 SSD-case
  • PNY CS900 480GB SSD (==Kingston A400 hardware inside)
  • Raspbee II

HassOS 5.10 64bit on Rpi4 8Gb works perfectly.
Boot SSD without SD card

Rpi4 8Gb
board X825
SSD Kingston A400 120 Gb
Power supply 5V 4A

Identical for me. See GitHub issue 1119.

Home Assistant OS 5.x has always worked well on my system.

Home Assistant OS 5.10 64bit on Rpi4 4GB is very reliable.
Booting SSD on USB3 port, without SD card.

My hardware:
Rpi4 4GB
StarTech USB 3.0 to Sata adapter
Crucial BX500 240GB SSD
Raspberry Pi power supply 5V 3A
Conbee II

Started with HAoS 5.08 64bit 3 weeks ago

Rpi4 4Gb
board X862
Western Digital M2 SSD 120GB
Power supply 5V 4A
conbee II stick on extended cable with anti-distortion coils on it.
Boot SSD without SD card on USB3

succesfully upgraded to 5.9 and recently to 5.10

system runs very stable

It seemed to work for me in October, just tried it today to load the Jan 11 firmware and it did not update. How do I know when it is done? I.e ping the device, network light board green LED? Thanks

@bschatzow You will have to set your eeprom update flag from critical to stable before checking for and update.
sudo nano /etc/default/rpi-eeprom-update
Change critical to
FIRMWARE_RELEASE_STATUS="stable"
and then run
sudo rpi-eeprom-update