Out of curiosity, are you running external power to the USB HDD? I’ve had that same issue before and it was because my rPi was experiencing drops in voltage when the HDD was experiencing a lot of I/O (usually from HA). As soon as I put the USB HDD on an external power source (in my case, a powered, external USB3 hub), I never had another issue with HA and/or the rPi becoming non-responsive.
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Generally people who suffer sd card corruption issues have 4 options.
- Move to an actual hard disk
- Move to an ssd
- STOP LOGGING EVERYTHING, turn you history off except for stuff you are debugging and minimise logging. What point is there in knowing what temperature your bedroom was at 22:00 last Thursday ?
- Buy lots of sd cards
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I log that kind of data, but mostly it’s to teach my family that they can save us (and by “us” I mean “me”) money and quit complaining that it’s “too hot” or “too cold”. LOL
The historical data also came in handy when I was planning out my smart vents and AC/heating system overhaul. I was able to show the installers where the hot and cold spots are in the house without having to use the words “it feels hot/cold in here”. I had a heat map built up from Grafana and Influx data that I handed to them. 
No, you’re right, reducing anyone’s carbon footprint is saving “us”
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OK, So I have my SSD at the ready, but I don’t understand any of this, the guides are plentiful and look quite complicated. Is there a plan for an SD card style installation for usb booting?
Of the general guides available, skynet’s is fairly comprehensive
Please be aware I’ve not managed to get it to work as I’m still waiting on a compatible ssd adapter
you meant recorder, right? 
Really ? That’s what you chose to take from that ?
That’s what I did when my last SD card died 
The SD card is only used for booting. After a power-off it worked ok. For a while.
Yes - separately powered drive. I thought that may be a potential problem with USB sticks so used a powered HD. I used some cloning software to copy the original USB backup to the drive so the partitions leave a lot to be desired though!
I’m curious! Which cloning software did you use?
Purely because I use Clonezilla - so many options it may have saved you some partition issues?
Can’t speak of anything other than Home Assistant on venv on Raspbian, but it is literally plug SSD into PC, flash Raspbian to SSD using Etcher or whatever (exact same process as when using an SD Card), enable ssh and any wifi networks as necessary, unplug SSD, plug SSD into Pi, boot, done.
Edit, then install Home Assistant, obviously 
If you took a full nightly image, you could restore everything in 20 mins.
I do full nightly on everything (3 Desktops, Laptop, Unraid Server) and keep for 30 days. And weekly to the cloud.
Why do so many? because it’s automated, i have the storage space, after catastrophic failure i can be up and running again in 20-30 mins.
Game saves and watched status on my HTPC Change daily, as do video projects i work on, on my editing PC.
Oh, phone pictures are automatically synced to Unraid server every night as well
OK wish me luck, Raspbian it is. The thing is nothing ever seems to work first go. Oh well i’m in my 40’s, might as well lose hair for a reason.
Going forward though, now I love HA I would love to see some simpler solutions for simpler people (like me). The setup process isn’t simple, and OpenHab has windows installers, the SD card installer is simple enough but SD isn’t the way. It would be great to run as an android app on an old tablet, this would be battery backed as would an old laptop.
I am still pulling my hair out with samba share at the moment and can’t proceed until I get this working.
I love it but I don’t want a career out of it. 
Make sure to add remote backup options into Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. Something that unloads your snapshots onto a remote server. I use: Google Drive Backup.
I tried this on my last setup but it kept sending me round in circles, I will make it priority this time.
Raspbian Buster is solid and reliable.
Be certain you install AppArmor before Docker-CE and Hass.io.
Just a helpful hint.
Which download please, there are 3. I don’t want to assume? Cheers
I’d recommend the version at RaspberryPi.org:
Raspbian Buster with desktop and recommended software
https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_full_latest