Making a Pi4 more robust as a HA hub?

Hardware
1

I desperately need to get a home automation hub but I need to keep costs down. I thought getting a Pi4 with Home Assistant is a reasonable way forward but I heard that the reliability of MicroSD cards is not great. I’ve had a Pi2 running Kodi media player for several years which hasn’t had an issue so I don’t think it can be that bad. However, a home automation hub is a little more critical than the media player (my other family members may disagree with this though).

If I stick with the Pi4 (attached to a UPS), then what’s a reasonable way to improve the situation giving best bang for buck:

  1. Accept that it will eventually fail and take regular back ups so that I can easily restore onto a fresh SD card to get back up and running ASAP.
  2. Same as 1 but use a high endurance Micro SD card that’s designed for dashcams (e.g. the SanDisk High Endurance card)
  3. Use an SSD instead of a Micro SD card

Thoughts?

2

Go the SSD route. I have a 120GB SSD running HASSOS and it’s rock solid, even with 90 days full data retention for my database.

I run an external drive via the USB port, but if you wanted to spoil yourself get an Argon ONE M.2 case…

1 Like
3

SSD: way more reliable and faster … but more expensive…

Here is a benchmark

4

Pi3B+ using an USB pen drive (“stick”) is a cheap alternative. I had some failures with SD cards, but never with USB pen drives. 3B+ is able to boot from USB out-of-the-box.

5

So will HASSOS and everything related to HA install directly on the SSD or will I need the Micro SD card in addition as well as the SDD? I had a look at the Argon One M2 case and it does look very very neat.

6

You need a small SD card to tell the pi to read from the USB instead of the SD card.

I would also say SSD.
SD cards and USB drives are not as reliable.
The SSD I bought was about the same price as a SD card.
128 GB for about $25-30.

7

I am running a Pi4 with an SSD and it is rock solid. I have had no issues after 6+ months, running complex Node-Red flows, a mix of WiFi and ZigBee devices.

8

Weird. I do not need that with my Pi 3B+ It boots directly off the USB connected SSD.

9

Probably because you used an SD card to tell it to do so.
After it’s done you don’t need the SD card anymore

1 Like
10

That is true.

11

You just need to update the firmware - depending on the age of your rPi 4 this may already be done.

Once you have done that - treat the SSD just like you would a SD card. Load the image file to the SSD and boot from the SSD, make sure you have no SD card loaded.

It will:

  • Take slightly longer to do the drive expansion on first boot
  • Use more power. I use a genuine rPi4 power supply for mine and it is fine.