I’m aware there are numerous posts on this topic which I’ve already located via search, but I haven’t been able to find the specific scenario I’m about to attempt so thought best to seek some expertise before starting.
Current situation: Raspberry Pi 4b with HAOS on SD
Target: Raspberry Pi 5 in tower enclosure with NVME SSD storage
The general consensus on moving from Pi 4 to Pi 5 appears to be to install a new image of HAOS on the Pi 5, back up the HAOS image from Pi 4 and then restore it on Pi 5. I’m fine with that. BUT I want to move to SSD rather than SD card on the Pi 5.
The added complexity is that this is all headless. I probably could at a push connect up to a monitor via HDMI, but keyboard is more tricky as I don’t have a USB keyboard. So what would you recommend?
It’s of course easy to get the HAOS installer and to put that onto SD, but how do I then get the installation from the SD (inserted in Pi 5) onto the SSD? Am I overlooking some easy way?
For me I had a similar situation but for me I used the raspberry pi imager to have the raspberry pi os (full) onto USB stick and boot from that and use the keyboard and mouse to use the raspberry pi imager from that to write HAOS onto the SSD to boot that. It was still useful to get into the console when doing a restore if I needed to tweak anything (e.g. network configuration) and after that it was headless.
I’ve not tested these, but I think these maybe options:
Connect up the SSD to another machine with raspberry pi imager and get it to put it onto the SSD that way. But you still may need console & keyboard access to fix some of the restore.
Use raspberry pi 5 network boot to get the raspberry pi imager options to write to the SSD - I think you’ll still need a keyboard and monitor to go through to set that up though…
Use raspberry pi imager to put on raspberry pi os and set all the remote options up from the imager (don’t think you can use it directly to do HAOS with those options) - potentially you could use that headless (or use connect) to use raspberry pi imager to write to the SSD restart and hopefully machine comes up on line and the restore doesn’t require any tweaks.
Personally I’d prefer the keyboard and monitor during set up just in case for troubleshooting.
I did exactly this and it was quite straightforward. I found a tip on the forum that made the process even easier which is to burn the HAOS image directly to the NVMe and bypass using an SD card on the Pi 5.
I guess it was written a few times already now: cheaper and better (faster) alternative is getting a mini PC - can be used, pretty much any will be faster than Pi5. Not long ago i received a commercial from banggood: miniPC with N150 CPU, 16G RAM and 512GB of SSD: 170$: example
Thanks everyone for the feedback. And apologies for the delay in replying - for whatever reason the forum didn’t notify that I’d had responses.
Today’s the day. I’ve taken on board the advice and ordered an enclosure for the SSD and will try to go that route. I’ve also ordered a basic USB mouse and keyboard. Hopefully up and running by end of day, but will report back.