Hey All - new to HA so still getting my head around a few things. I’ve read that running HA on the SD card is likely to fail and should move to an SSD.
EDIT: I’m on a Raspberry Pi 4
I have a couple of older Samsung Portable SSDs lying around that I don’t need (only 250gb)
so can I use one of these? Or do I need to buy an internal SSD and adapter cable as demo’d on
numerous youtube videos?
thoughts?
I’d rather not buy more drives if I don’t need but also don’t want HA to fall over!
B
Is this a Rasberry Pi
yes Rasberry Pi 4 sorry forgot to mention that.
Sd cards fail due to multiple writes to card. Reads aren’t really an issue. disable recorder and dont log and really you may be fine if you get decent quality sd card.
If recorder is desired it should be possible to mount external ssd and put OS on sd and config on external.
Also sd failures are only a big deal if you dont have external backup and still not big deal then as data on card is usually accessible. Really once all is well setup just image the sd so you will have immediately restorable system and pair this with external backup and you should be OK. Install backup card>>upgrade to current version running>> restore backup if desired. If more than that becomes needed you will likely be looking at hardware upgrade by that time and sd wont be important anymore
I’ve been running for 2 years now on a Pi4 with an external Samsung SSD. Absolutely no issues, except for the possible requirement to use a USB 2 port rather than USB 3 (HAOS may have fixed this but I am still plugged in via USB 2). Still faster and more reliable than a SD card.
A dedicated vm could be a more flexible platform. Stay away from SD cards.
As long as you have enough power it should be fine. A powered usb hub or powered drive enclosure can help.
I have a Sam sung T3 and a T7 (both 1TB which is way more space than ever needed) - one is a backup, I just clone the other one to it from time to time. They use very little power and work beautifully. The RPI runs slow as molasses unless you use an SSD. It does not have to be any kind of an internal SSD, you can use either (mine are external)…
Yes, you can use your older Samsung SSDs, but you still need an adapter, because Raspis do not have a connection for a SSD built-in.
Like every type of flash!
While different types of flash allow different amounts of writes all flash is limited.
The good thing with quality SSD’s (compared even to quality SD cards) is that they have a cache inside the ssd which very successful minimizes write amplification on flash cells - specially when having smaller (db) writes like HA!
Was this written by chatgpt? The type of storage has nothing to do if virtualization is used or not.
External ssd’s sounds like the ones with the USBs - hence no adapter should be necessary as a raspberry has USB ports!
I tried an external SSD once on my Raspberry PI 4. With USB 3 the Raspberry had no WiFi and no Bluetooth connection anymore. Everything worked fine with the USB 2 ports except after some days the Raspberry stopped working with no trace in the log. After a reboot, it happened every time after some days. So, I switched back to the SD.
I know that a lot of people are running this configuration without problems. But if you look at the posts some people have exactly this problem with an external SSD. And I did not find any clue to the underlying reason.
I ran an external SSD on my rPi running Home Assistant for about a year until it grew to the point that a VM made much more sense for performance (and it made a huge difference), however I still run rPi + SSD in my RV just fine. That being said, to have a reliable external SSD setup:
I’ve always used the USB2 ports on my Pi but mostly because I started off that way to make sure I was eliminating USB3 ports as a problem, but I’m pretty sure I’ve run my HUB off the USB3 ports just fine.
No, but looks like it was read and replied to by it. Here, I’ll break it down for you:
“A dedicated vm could be a more flexible platform.
“Stay away from SD cards.”
Your issue with other items dying may be due to the SSD you had pulling a little too much current so the other items were starved for juice… (I have, for (further up in this thread - this SSD)) a slightly more powerful power supply than the official one that comes with the RPI - I would suggested you try a different power supply before abandoning an SSD setup. The minumum power supply requirements for an RPI4 is:
(I got one from Amazon rated as 5.1V and 3.1A - and I have Wifi and HDMI and bluetooth turned off to save power on my device as well, as I use ethernet only - and no dongles like zigbee or the like - for better reliability as well) I am a HUGE evangelist for Shelly, you cannot go wrong with them.
Also, note this is the resolution to the RPI dying - (Doesn’t get to the root cause, but it does COMPLETELY resolve that kind of issue). This might in fact be because of an SSD (maybe there is a bug in USB firmware), but I am not sure. Either way my solution 100% resolves it -
I agree with KruseLuds.
Use a good stable powerful powersupply and then only the external SSD drawing power from the USB.
All other USB devices should be connected to a powered USB hub, which should make the setup quite stable.
This one gets a +1
RPi are ‘known for’ being the power friendly alternative to large self host setups but comparatively for other devices of its breed. It’s a power hungry little monster.
If you don’t give it enough power *blip and a default setup is already borderline. Add two USB radio coordinatorsnl, an external Bluetooth transceiver and a USB SSD… It doesn’t have a chance without a powered usb hub and a high end power supply.
Sounds like it indeeed!
My x86 micro PC (athom, 2GB ram, wifi+bt) runs HaOS on an external (USB) SSD and is totally happy with a 5V/1.8A (9W) PSU since years.
Hi, I think I’m getting to the stage of needing to go down the SSD route. Are there any instructions/guides on how to achieve this.
As we are talking about SSD, I am looking for a program under Windows to make an exact clone of my SSD.
If I have a problem with my SSD (“data error” or other) I just have to mount my clone.
It’s true that it is possible to reset a new SSD with image and restore the last full snapshot.
but I would prefer an exact clone of my ssd
THANK YOU
I have two SSD’s - one for “prod” and the other as backup - and here is how I back up - (I have HA running on a RPI4 8Gig RAM with Debian and Home Assistant Supervised running headless booting off a 1TB SSD in a USB 3.0 port - and no desktop installed on it, I only use SSH to get to the host, I run it headless). Both SSD’s have to be the same size.
sudo systemctl disable hassio-supervisor.service
sudo systemctl disable hassio-apparmor.service
sudo ha host shutdown
(Note, the above may take some time, be patient. This way when you boot up the SSD it would not have HA running in case I want to do something else to it before starting up HA - and the copy will be clean as well, as you know everything was safely shut down):
Wait until the RPI is completely shut down safely
Pull the power cord
Pull the SSD USB cable out
Put a generic raspbian MicroSD card into the RPI, reconmect the power cord, and boot it up on trhe MIcroSD card.
(You may have to create the MicroSD first with free VNC server installed and then install the VNC client onto your PC)
Go into the RPI Raspbian desktop (I use VNC as mentioned above)
Plug BOTH SSD’s into two of the USB ports
Once they are connected and their contents popup on the desktop (just close those windows and ignore them), use the SD Card Copier app (under accessories) to copy everything from one SSD to the other. (I have two different models of SSD’s (a Samsung T3 and a Samsung T7 - so it is easy to tell which is which when selecting the to and from in the SD Card Copier app)
Once the copy process is completed, shut shut down the RPI form the logout menu.
Only once it is shut down, disconnect the power cord.
Pull out the backup SSD USB, remove the MicroSD Card, and plug the power back in
When the RPI has booted up, I use this command - it may take a little but you will be up and running perfectly in no time. (You can also do this with your backup to test it, but then don’t forget step 1 again when shuttong down your test):
sudo systemctl enable hassio-supervisor.service
sudo systemctl enable hassio-apparmor.service
sudo reboot now
I may switch to VM’s as I heard it is much faster to make a ‘snapshot’ but I don’t have enoughh nknowledge and do not know if that would safely completely clone the entire SSD -
I have the google backup add-on, if I have to restore an old copy, I just use the sd car copier app to copy back from the backup to the prod SSD, and then when I am back in home assistant I just restore the latest backup. I have tried that, it has saved my butt many times, and it works.)
Hope that helps