Installing Home Assistant on a RPi 4b with SSD boot

I used this guide: Installing Home Assistant on a RPi 4b 8GB with SSD boot

Just put your SSD in a cabinet and connect it to a USB port …
BalenaEtcher will do the rest. :slight_smile: Be sure to use the right unit!

Thanks. Somehow I missed the big picture. In my setup it took a bit of thought about how to hook it up to USB. Got that done and HA is initializing. Going to leave it alone for the night.
Thanks again.

Hi there!

I followed this guide some time ago and worked fantastic for me. I started with the development 5.3 but then updated till 5.8 using the supervisor and all worked well.

My problem came when I updated to 5.9 when the register stoped working and the performance of the general system really slowed down. Automation would work but nothing appeared in the register and was really slow.

So, I thought it was a problem with the update to 5.9 so I went back and installed a 5.6
fresh developer version and updated to the last snapshot I had from some days ago when all worked well. Well, the problem persists. Register won’t work. System performance seem to work better though.

Note that in any case (5.9 or 5.6) I can’t find any error on the log that points to this problem.

Anyone thinks of something that could solve the problem? Thank you!

@ josemsubcn
Same zwave problem here.
Rpi4 8GB, 120GB Sandisk SSD, inateck fe2013 usb3.0 case
Zwave.me usb stick
Everything runs fine, except the zwave network. Nodes are found, but it takes a long time to initialize. Some of the nodes are ‘complete’ but most stay “dynamic”. None of them will carry out commands. Very strange. Tried to change USB ports without success.
When I plug the zwave.me stick back to the “rpi-4gb-sdcard twin system” the zwave network works within two minutes or so.

Apparently my database was malformed. I deleted it and now, register and history works again. Now I don’t know if that had something to do with the 5.9 update or not. I think I’ll stick to 5.6 for now.

Hi,
It’s very important to keep the zigbee adapter away from the SSD.

Picture 1 Zigbee Works


Picture 2 Zigbee does not works

Picture 3 Zigbee Works

True, but… My raZberry is a GPIO card. Kinda hard to put away and still have it connected to the RPI :slight_smile:

Anyway. I know I did a “dtoverlay=pi3-miniuart-bt” on my RPI3 (running from SD card) and it works.
Unfortunately when booting from SSD you dont have the /boot folder so you can edit the config.txt file.

I still hope that there is some other way to do this.

Yesterday i transferred my home assistant from my Rpi3 with Sdcard to Rpi4 with SSD.

First i want to thank @Jpsy for the great tutorial which makes it so easy to do.
Second thanks to @pepe59 for his info on the geekworm addon boards for the Rpi4.

Setup:
Rpi4 with X862 board and M2 120Gb WD SSD
X735 board on top off Rpi4 for power and cooling

Followed the tutorial and everything went fine.
Only it took 3 hours for updating the Pi, but the eeprom updated to the 11/12/20 version.
Did some diagnostics on the raspberry pi OS and the write/read difference between the Sd and SSD is 20x.
Then flashed HA 5.9 onto my SSD.
And system restarted very quick.
Then installed my snaphot, but some add-ons didnt restore( esphome, file editor).
Installed them through addon store and they worked.
Only problem i had was with my conbee II stick.
I had it before on my RPi3 on a extention cable that worked ok, on the Rpi4 even with that cable the stick didnt work correctly. There were sensors that worked others didint. And i could not pair any new devices to my zigbee network.
Solution was another extention cable with some anti-distortion coils on it, and placing the stick a bit further away from the Pi.
Combinatie-converter-usb-2-0-anti-interferentie-data-lijn-micro-usb-kabel-verlichting-adapter-voor-smart.jpg_50x50

I also had to delete my database because it wasnt recording anymore. After restart that was also ok.

You could use something like that

or this

Thanks… But the issue here is not that there is interferenze from the SSD and raZberry GPIO card.
The issue is that I’ve to disable the BT stack (uses the GPIO someway) so the raZberry card get full access to the GPIO pins.

This is exactly the setup I have

Thank you for the nice explanation. Just made the change from RPI4 8GB with micro SD to SSD.
Everything works right away. Even the back up snapshot of my micro SD works without tweaks.

Good stuf!

Nice guide. However, I have a few questions.

  1. What about the supervisor and the Home Assistant Core updates after running HA in SSD? Does the update process is the same like running in SD card where we just click the update button in the Supervisor front end when there is a prompt of updates available?

  2. Is the SSD booting process reversible? How can I switch back to SD card booting? I’m asking this is because I only have one Rpi4 running HA with SD card now. And if something goes wrong with SSD setup, i want to know how can i revert back to SD card.

Thanks in advance.

  1. i am not a expert on the subject( went with ssd 2 days ago) but updating will be the same. Your install is just on a different device, but works the same way.
  2. i saw during the config when setting boot order, that the Pi boots from ssd only when there is no sd card present. So putting back your sd card should boot your HA from that one.

For the experts…please correct me if i am wrong

1 Like

Do you have problems with the bleutooth range on your setup? I use device tracker on HA and on my Rpi3 my phone was detected all through my house , now detection range is aprox 4m.

  1. Default boot order is sd and then USB
    But you van change that. You can fijne info on the raspberry.org site.
    I’m gonna change it to boot USB and then de.
    That way, i can leave the SD in the rpi and it will boot from de always when i remove thee USB.
    I have and argon one m2 and to reach the SD, i need to open the case. So, i guess this is the easiest solution

@stefan.uytterhoeven, @Vdwkes, thanks for the info. Good to know we still can boot from SD card. Just left with the question about the Supervisor updates and the Core updates, would like to know if there is any difference between what we are doing with sd card.

Also, is anyone using CC2531 with RPi that boot from SSD? Does it work?

Oscar, thank you for your post. Though I could not believe the ssd interfered with the zwave stick (which was connected using a 10 cm extension cable, obviously not enough), you were right. Now I am using a 150cm usb extension cable, and all problems are gone. Astonishing. Tx again.

1 Like

I followed the instructions and have Home Assistant booted up on my rpi4 8gb with a samsung ssd. I can see it on my network, I know the ip but, homeassistant.local:8123, hassio.local:8123, homeassistant:8123 ip-of-the-instance:8123 doesn’t work. I can ping it, that’s about it. I already have an instance of home assistant running so I tried changing the hostname on it to something other than homeassistant. Also powered down my existing rpi and that didnt work either. It shows up on my network as homeassistant7. So I tried using that also. No luck.

I have a monitor and keyboard connected and it shows Welcome to Home Assistant with a login prompt. Not sure where to go from here.

could be a problem with USB adaptor see part in first post " use the right sata to usb3 adaptor"

And i know with my setup i couldnt use a samsung SSD, this was stated by manufacturer