I love my Home Assistant and everything it can do but considering if I should upgrade my Raspberry Pi 3 that is running it. The main reason is periodic dying of sd card or USB flash.
I like what RPi can do and the vast support online but I would like something more dependable to run HA. Is there a way to boot RPi/HA with portable USB hard disk? Otherwise, what are my choices, similar to RPi but more dependable for daily use?
Odroid XU4 support eMMC storage, more powerful processor, and twice the RAM.
http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G143452239825
I moved the database to a USB stick, maybe that is an option for you.
There are a few different blog posts explaining how to do this - I could try to find them in case you are interested.
One of them is from @Tinkerer who was very helpful and has a number of useful posts on his blog for all different kind of HA-things.
I moved from a RPI to an Asus Beenox running Ubuntu. A lot more powerful, still passively cooled and with an SSD instead of an SD card.
Dell Wyse thin client here - SSD, passive cooling, looks the business, got it super-cheap off of eBay.
If you’re running normal HA and use debian (or debian-based, like Ubuntu etc) the majority of the instructions for the raspberry pi will be the same, as raspian is just debian for the raspberry pi.
I’m in love 
The light on the SSD even looks like a hearbeat So pretty 
@chairstacker is that still with RPi? Just got my HA back online after my USB stick dead which my RPi was booting from. So the idea is to move the database off to a separate USB stick to cut down on the wear-n-tear on the main system USB stick/sd card?
[edit]
I found this on the topic moving logs and database off the SD card
@anon43302295 I’ll have to keep an eye out for this, definitely on my Xmas list, looks awesome 
Thanks
@oakbrad how would HA run on Odroid? I did hassbian install on my RPi3, would that be a different install?
@aimc Tried to search Asus Beenox, did not find what it is. Can you point me to its specs?
Typo, sorry, should have been Beebox
Hassbian image is Pi only, but Hassbian is just Debian with Home Assistant already installed.
So install Debian (or personally I like DietPi, a slimmed down Debian) and then just follow the instructions for HA. You could do the python venv method (what Hassbian is) or you could install in Docker (what I personally do).
Correct - it’s on the RPi3 and for cutting down on the wear of the SD card by moving most of the write activity to another card or stick.
And yes, that’s one of the blogs I read before I moved the database.
Yes I believe you use the exact same procedure you used to boot of the USB stick - just use a USB HDD instead.
If you’re near a reasonably sized metro you should be able to find someone that sells refurbished used computers. They’ll be more than reasonably priced and you can actually try it out before buying, rather than taking a risk on something you get off eBay. Toss out the hard drive that comes with it and put in a nice SSD.
I looked through suggestions here, so my options are either move onto some form of mini pc/laptop with ssd or work with the rpi to minimize wear-n-tear on main boot drive.
Thank you all for your suggestions.
you CAN run on a Pi off an SSD
Is it Asrock or Asus?
Asrock, my memory is atrocious
Have looked at the power consumption of your WYSE thin client? Just wondering how much more power it uses.
Looks good regardless.
The specs just say ‘under 9 watts’, so around the same as the NUC i5 I would think.
